


How Hunters Could Have Ended

by captain_janeway



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Apologies, Emotional 12k, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s02e11 Maneuvers, Episode: s02e25 Resolutions, Episode: s04e15 Hunters, Eventual Smut, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Grief/Mourning, Let Chakotay cry damn it, alternate endings, healthier relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2019-08-11
Packaged: 2020-04-23 06:17:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 30,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19145248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captain_janeway/pseuds/captain_janeway
Summary: The last scene from "Hunters," and what happened after. Chakotay lays it all on the table. Kathryn gives him a real answer.





	1. Hunters

**Author's Note:**

> The best-laid plans . . . 
> 
> Originally this was the "Hunters" episode from my series Voyager: Memories, Speakable and Unspeakable. The series is still going, and definitely isn't orphaned. The only downside to this, my OTP, is that they only get to do this once. 
> 
> What began as "a few deleted scenes," where I only had plans to put some flesh on the bones of what Paramount gave us has become a full-blown retcon. Unfortunately, this version of "Hunters" doesn't fit it anymore, but I like it too much to give it up. So, here it is. 
> 
> ***Any dialogue that you recognize in this first chapter is as it appears in the broadcast episode.***

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 7/6/19 - Flashback to "Resolutions" added.

_Captain's log, supplemental: Seven of Nine and Commander Tuvok suffered no serious physical damage after their encounter on the alien ship. I've been eager to hear Tuvok's impressions of the species who took them hostage._  
  
The chime to the ready room rang, and Kathryn looked up from the coffee she had just poured. “Come in."  
  
Tuvok entered. “Am I disturbing you, Captain?”  
  
“Not at all. Please.” She moved over on the sofa to make space for him to sit. “Tea?” She glanced at the coffee service on the low table. “I know how much you love drinking coffee.”  
  
“Thank you, but no. I am quite content for the moment.”  
  
She sat back into the cushions, turning to face him and resting her arm on the viewport, scrutinizing him intently. While she was sure that Tuvok was prepared to debrief her on everything that had transpired on the away mission, if that had been his only purpose he would have stated it outright. That had always been his way.  
  
“Captain, I am prepared to give you a full report on the away mission; however, before I do, may I ask you a personal question?” He turned towards her.  
  
“Go ahead.”  
  
“Was the letter you received from your fiancé?”  
  
She swallowed. “Yes.”  
  
“And it was not good news.”  
  
The corner of her mouth turned up in an echo of a wry smile. “You sound like you already know, Tuvok.”  
  
“I do not know, Captain, but I came to it as a logical conclusion. You may not appear to be grieving, but you are certainly not celebrating. I also noticed that all of the crew performance reports are up-to-date two weeks in advance. Most of them were completed this morning.” He paused. “I have known you for a long time, Captain. You make a habit of escaping into your work.”  
  
She sighed and shook her head. “You’re correct.”  
  
“But it was not completely unexpected.” It was more of a statement than a question.  
  
“No,” she answered. “It wasn’t.” She took a deep swallow from her coffee cup. “We’ve been thought lost or dead for years. To expect someone to hold out hope for that long when the odds of finding us were so small . . . to expect them _not_ to grieve and move on with their lives would be . . . selfish.” She toyed with the handle of the cup, swiveling it left and right in the middle of the saucer, watching the steaming liquid lap the sides. “A confirmation of a truth that you’ve suspected doesn’t necessarily make it easier to understand.”  
  
Tuvok nodded. “Captain, I am truly sorry. I know that I would find it very difficult if I were in your position.”  
  
His voice trailed into a whisper, and she knew that he was thinking of T’Pel. She looked up at him. “Thank you Tuvok. That means a lot.” A beat passed between them, the silence of old friends. “And I hope that you don’t take that to mean that I begrudge you your letter from T’Pel.” She smiled, a look of genuine happiness amid the ship’s grief. “Your family is well and misses you.” She placed her hand near him without touching him on the sofa. “I really am glad to know that at least three of us got good news. You’re a grandfather. Harry’s parents and Libby know he’s alive. Samantha and Naomi got a letter and a photo from Greskrendtregk. She can see her father, and he knows that he has a daughter. And Sam knows that he’s waiting for them to get home.” She swallowed. “I’m grateful for all of it.”  
  
“I appreciate your concern, Captain. I do not think that you would ever begrudge me, or any member of this crew, good news from their family. It would be most unlike you if you did.” He cleared his throat and continued. “I hope that I am not overstepping my bounds, Captain—”  
  
“On the contrary.”  
  
“You mistake me. I hope that I am not overstepping my bounds when I say that I hope this will allow you and Commander Chakotay to begin to negotiate whatever feelings are between you.”  
  
She looked at him so quickly she cricked her neck. “I beg your pardon?”  
  
“It has been obvious to me Captain, for quite some time, that you and the Commander are well-suited for each other, and work best when you are together.” Even through her bewilderment that he, _Tuvok_ , was suddenly bringing up _this_ , _now_ , Kathryn heard the gentle appreciation in his voice, the serenity of his logic. “You are each exemplary in your own ways, but together . . . you magnify each other. You defend each other. Your loyalty alone, to all of us, has been something to behold. I know that it has gone well beyond duty, many times.” He looked up to meet her eyes. “A high ideal, and a force to be reckoned with. I think that the entire crew would agree with me.” He quirked an eyebrow. “And Captain, if you cannot already see that his devotion extends well beyond Voyager specifically to you, then I advise you to report to sickbay so that the Doctor may examine your vision.”  
  
She laughed. “May I take that as your blessing?”  
  
He frowned. “Do you need my blessing?”  
  
“No,” she conceded, “but it’s nice to have in any case. Relationships between commanding officers, well . . . there’s a reason the manual is three centimeters thick.”  
  
Tuvok nodded. “You are right, and wise, to be cautious. However, I have known you for a long time, Captain. I have seen you locking yourself away in the interests of being our Captain first. If my counsel is not out of place on this matter, I think that you have been cautious enough.” He placed the tips of his fingers together, each with its respective parallel. “You are correct that the manual is three centimeters thick. You also know that it specifically does not forbid you from pursuing this, if you so choose.”  
  
Her lips tugged into a smile. “A ringing endorsement.” She raised her cup to him lightly, toasting him across the sofa. “I can’t promise you that we’ll make a formal announcement Tuvok, but when negotiations conclude . . .” She trailed off, pensive, and then amended, “If negotiations ever _open_ . . . I’ll let you know.”  
  
“I appreciate that, Captain.” He rose. “May I give you the report from our away mission while I am here?”  
  
Kathryn rose and made her way to the desk, then sat. “Please.” This felt more normal. Reports, away missions, not Tuvok asking about her personal life. Not that he had never asked before, or even had avoided the subject in the past, but she had not expected him to take such a direct line of questioning.  
  
_If you cannot already see that his devotion extends well beyond Voyager specifically to you, then I advise you to report to sickbay so that the Doctor may examine your vision._ His words rang in her ears, and the weight of the guilt that she had spent the last two years denying began to settle in, like smoke made solid. Chakotay had waited, was perhaps still waiting, and had perhaps been waiting without hope since _Voyager_ had come back for them on New Earth.  
  
“Proceed.” She leaned back in the chair, and reached out to take the padd that he handed her.  
  
“Fortunately or unfortunately, it’s very short. Apart from their species’s tradition of collecting ‘relics’ of their victims, I learned very little about them. I believe we should consider them extremely dangerous. They seem to lack any moral center.”  
  
She looked from the padd’s concise report up to Tuvok. “Do you know why the relay network was so important to them?”  
  
Tuvok shook his head. “No. I assume they used it for communications, as we did.”  
  
“Well, they won't be using it any more.” She pursed her lips ruefully.  
  
He raised his eyebrows in acknowledgement. “They won't be pleased about that, Captain. I doubt we've seen the last of them.”  
  
Kathryn rubbed her forehead as the door chime rang. “Come in.” She sighed.  
  
Commander Chakotay entered. Tuvok could see that he had been about to speak, and then registered that the Captain was not alone. _Was it surprise on his face? A modicum of disappointment?_ He wasted to time. “If you'll excuse me,” he directed at her, quirking an eyebrow as if to say “What did I tell you?” and turned to leave. “Commander.” He nodded, and Chakotay returned it as they passed.  
  
Chakotay strode forward to the desk. "Repair teams have inspected the ship from stem to stern.” He rested his hands on it almost casually, glad to have something to do with his hands that wasn’t holding them awkwardly by his sides. "Except for some maintenance that's needed on the warp coils, everything seems fine.”  
  
She was looking up at him, her fingers interlaced, her face ruminative. “I suppose so.” Then she seemed to come out of it. “Want some coffee?” She reached for her own cup and saucer as she rose, even before he had answered.  
  
“Thanks.”  
  
“Cream and sugar, huh?"  
  
“Two sugars,” he answered.  
  
“Oh! Two sugars?!” He smiled, knowing that she was only playfully chastising him. He knew how she took her own coffee—black, except for some of the very late-night cups that saw a splash of cream—and his insides clenched at the thought of the intensity of drinking it unadulterated. “You know, you drink too much of that stuff.”  
  
“Really?” She gave him an appraising look, setting her cup and saucer down on the coffee table and watching him follow her to the sofa.  
  
“If I'm not mistaken that's your third cup this morning."  
  
“Fourth,” she corrected him as she poured out, "and on a day like today, it won't be my last.”  
  
She didn’t see him shake his head affectionately, nor did she see the smile that he couldn’t keep from spreading unchecked across his face.  
  
“Coffee—the finest organic suspension ever devised. It's got me through the worst of the last three years.” She added cream and two sugars, then straightened to hand his to him. “I beat the Borg with it.” They toasted jovially in midair and sat, he leaning forward with his elbows to his knees, she resting her crossed ankles up on the coffee table. This was what he had been hoping for—Kathryn at ease. Kathryn at home.  
  
“Oh, I'm sure _Voyager_ will be fine,” she said as he took long sip, “but I'm worried that the crew might be a different story. I think they were hoping mail call would become a regular part of their day.”  
  
He nodded. “Neelix is putting together an impromptu party. He thought it might cheer them up.”  
  
The half-smile tugging at the corner of her mouth never disappeared. “A good idea. When will it be?”  
  
“As soon as he can get people together."  
  
She shook her head, and her full smile was genuine. “Leave it to Neelix to come up with the right idea at the right time.” She brought her own cup to her lips, and took an appreciative draught from it. Chakotay set his own in his lap.  
  
“And how are you doing?” he asked, hoping that he had struck the right balance of tenderness and precision. The battle he fought, the battle he _always_ fought, was between wanting her to know where he still stood and fearing that telling her would be a step too far, flirting with crossing a line that they had established years ago. And yet, the moment that she had said must come had come.  
  
*     *     *     *     *  
  
Tuvok had beamed them directly to Sickbay, and the Doctor had busied himself preparing their hyposprays while explaining every detail that Denara Pel had given him about the virus, and how the Vidiians had managed to effect the antidote. He had let him talk, too intent on watching Kathryn to take in half of what he was saying.  
  
She looked like she had caught someone walking on her grave. The light in her eyes was distant, and he had wondered for half a hopeful second if she was regretting them leaving New Earth before he had shaken himself. _Ridiculous_.  
  
He accepted the hypospray in his neck without comment, without flinching, watching as she did the same.  
  
He watched her unabashedly now. Twelve weeks on the planet that they had believed was going to be their home for the rest of their lives had taught him more about her than the two years on _Voyager_. He knew where to look in her eyes to see the conflict, and how to see past her practiced, controlled exterior. The Kathryn he knew, the Kathryn who had let herself be known to him a little more each day, was still there, but was strapping on her armor again. Gauntlets of protocol. Vambraces of ruthless, flogging self-denial. A breastplate etched with guilt and set with stones from the Caretaker's remains. Her single-minded duty emblazoned on her shield.  
  
He watched in agony, powerless to stop her. Half an hour later, the Doctor had discharged them.  
  
An hour after leaving the Bridge, he was still putting things away, distractedly reading reports as he folded socks into drawers and hung objects on the walls again, stopping every few minutes to run his fingers distractedly through his hair or press the heels of his palms against his closed eyelids. He gave the reading up as a bad job, and set the computer to reading it to him. The cool, mechanical voice was familiar. Enough to stave off the sucking silence that he knew waited for him whenever his mind stilled.  
  
"Propulsion Report 9072: Ensign Vorik reports that the plasma manifolds are—"  
  
What Ensign Vorik had reported about the plasma manifolds, he never heard.  
  
The door chimed, and he had barely said, "Come in," before he heard it close followed by the light tread of running footsteps. He _knew_ that sound.  
  
_It's not possible._  
  
He looked up in time to see Kathryn sprinting through the bedroom doorway, her sheet of auburn hair having tumbled out of its composed twist. He was certain he was dreaming as he reached to catch her, and equally certain that if he _were_ dreaming she could not look as she did. She leapt the last few feet into his arms, crashing against his chest, clutching at his shoulders like she was afraid that he would vanish if she didn't hold tightly enough.  
  
_The very idea. As though he would ever willingly let go of her._    
  
They stood as they had met, holding each other as tightly as their grief-worn muscles could manage. Kathryn was pressing her forehead into his shoulder, bracing herself against completely coming apart in his arms. He let her, resting his hand against the back of her head and his arm around her shoulders.  
  
"Computer, pause report."  
  
The cool voice silenced, and they continued to stand in each other's embrace. Chakotay was unwilling to enter the silence, not knowing if anything he said would strengthen what they had found on New Earth or break it.  
  
"For better or worse, Chakotay, I won't go back to the way things were."  
  
He stared at her, gobsmacked.  
  
"Do you still feel the same way you did yesterday? And the day before? Have _you_ changed your mind?  
  
"No."  
  
She swallowed. "I have one condition."  
  
"Let's hear it."  
  
She sighed. "I want to break off my engagement before I'm willing to start anything between us."  
  
He was quiet for a long moment, staring into the blue of her eyes, taking her right hand in his and bringing it to his lips.  
  
"Tell me."  
  
"I—." She took a shuddering breath, blushing a little at the intensity with which he kissed her. "I made a promise that I'm not going to keep," she said, and her voice had gotten smaller than he had ever heard it. "For all I know, Mark's still waiting, and has been since we were lost. It's not his fault that I'm not the same person that I was when we left, that I was willing to strand us out here with no way of telling them we're alive. I owe him . . . " she faltered. "Closure? An ending? I don't know."  
  
She brought their clasped hands to her, pressing fevered kisses into his fingertips. "I want it to be us. No loose ends, no ghosts, no might-have-beens. No one else. _Just us_."  
  
He said nothing. It was more than he had ever hoped for, and simultaneously beyond reach.  
  
She looked up at him. "If we do this when the time comes, then we do this together. No qualifications. If the moment ever comes."  
  
He never diverted his eyes from her as he drew her hand to his lips again. "I'll wait."  
  
"I won't hold you to that," she breathed, as though his words had knocked the wind out of her. "This could take years. I can't ask you to sacrifice yourself like that."  
  
"I know you can't. And even if you could, you wouldn't. That's why I volunteered."     
  
*     *     *     *     *  
  
They were standing at the line that they had established years ago. He just couldn’t tell if this was the moment to cross it.  
  
_Is this the moment? Is this too soon? For both of us?_  
  
Kathryn looked at him, blinking and bemused. “Me? I'm fine.”  
  
He laughed gently. “You'd say that if you'd just had your legs torn off by a Traykan Beast.” Her smile told him that he was right—not that he didn’t already know—and he nudged forward. “Look what you've been through in the last few days. We finally make a connection with home and then it's ripped away from us.”  
  
She realized in that moment what he had come to talk about, and she leaned her head over the back of the sofa. The guilt that she had begun to feel earlier returned, even more solid, settling around her ribs like concrete. _Has he waited, this entire time? Has he done exactly what he said he would do, and allowed me to take what I needed? And I’m . . . grieving. How am I grieving? How can this even be a grief, when I know how long I've waited for this?_  
  
Chakotay saw her eyes slip in and out of focus. “We manage to make another enemy who's going to try and hunt us down and destroy us,” he pressed on, fighting to keep his voice steady. His own grief weighed heavier on him by the minute, but at least in his he knew that he was not alone. She on the other hand, was, or thought she was. “And on top of that . . .” He trailed off, finally reaching what he really wanted to talk about and finding that he couldn’t make himself say the words. He knew that he would never wish grief on her, ever. At the same time, he knew that if she told him that her feelings hadn’t changed, he would fall to his knees then and there and thank any spirits who happened to listening for the messages that had come through the array, whatever they had cost.  
  
“It's all right. You can say it.” She lifted her head, and her expression was inscrutable. “On top of all that, I got a 'Dear John' letter.” She looked down at her own coffee cup, and fiddled with the handle. “It wasn't really a surprise. I guess I didn't really expect him to wait for me considering the circumstances.” She took a measured breath, and cast him a sidelong glance. “But it made me realize that I was using him as a safety net, you know. As a way to avoid becoming involved with someone else.”  
  
“You don't have that safety net any more.” _Tenderness,_ he thought. _How can I tell her without pushing her that I am all in on this? That I am still all in on this? That she has nothing to be afraid of?_ Chakotay contented himself with gazing at her, unblinking, as though she might somehow understand without him saying anything.  
  
“That's right,” she continued. “Then again," she continued casually, "My life is far from uneventful here in the Delta Quadrant.” He smiled. “It's not like I would have had a chance to pursue a relationship, even if I had realized I was alone.”  
  
Even as she said it, she knew that it was hollow. She would never have asked him to wait if she hadn’t felt honor-bound to break off her engagement with Mark first. What she would have done if they had never received the letters, she couldn’t begin to imagine. _Why can’t I just say it? “This is the moment we’ve waited for.” That we've waited long enough? Have we waited long enough? Is he still waiting?_  
  
Tuvok’s words echoed in her mind again. _If you cannot already see that his devotion extends well beyond Voyager specifically to you, then I advise you to report to sickbay so that the Doctor may examine your vision_.  
  
She couldn’t make the words, any words, come out of her mouth.  
  
_You’re not alone_ his mind railed. _But it’s a step toward an “us.”_  
  
“You're hardly alone,” he said aloud. “And to my way of thinking, there's still plenty of time.” As much to assuage his own fears as to comfort hers. Perhaps hearing it aloud would quell the fluttering anxieties that had begun flapping in earnest in his chest.  
  
She looked him straight in the eyes when she answered, “Plenty of time.”  
  
They lapsed into a comfortable silence, Chakotay taking a long draught from his coffee. She teetered on the edge of a rash decision. Part of her was ready to pitch headlong into what she had been holding back for years: _yes_. Yes to everything he had once offered her. Another part of her—the pragmatic part, if she was honest with herself—held back. _Is it fair to him to do this now? To put this on top of his grief? Is that what he came for? How do I know when the moment comes? He may be devoted. Concerned. But that doesn’t mean that his feelings are the same. Can I hold him to what he said years ago?_  
  
Chakotay set the porcelain cup back comfortably in its saucer, then placed it on the table. She blinked a few times, hoping he hadn’t realized how intently she had been watching him. “Kathryn, I don’t know what to say. Except thank you.”  
  
“What for?”  
  
“For telling me. For not bottling this thing up.” His voice quieted, and he leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees, staring into his own open palms. “For not keeping it from me so you can flagellate yourself with it when you think I’m not looking.”  
  
The silence this time was heavier, more expectant.  
  
_Is this the moment? Is this when we decide?_  
  
Chakotay watched her quietly, watched the thoughts that he couldn’t see swarming through her mind. She was near a decision—she always took a breath like that right before she acknowledged a truth that was staring her in the face. He waited.  
  
She parted her lips, as though she were about to speak.  
  
“Neelix to the ready room.” The Talaxian’s ebullient voice punched through the ready room’s comm link. He watched Kathryn’s eyes flick upward to listen, the point of her chin rising with them. He smiled in spite of himself. “The party's about to begin and there are only two people missing.”  
  
_Damn_. Her nerve failed her. “We’re on our way.” She said it with a little too much bravado.  
  
They rose from the sofa almost in unison, Chakotay proffering her his arm gallantly. “Duty calls.” She took it, laughing. They hadn’t taken two steps toward the door before he stopped. “Kathryn, wait.”  
  
He sighed, then worried his lower lip with his teeth. “Come back with me after?” He gestured vaguely towards the door. “It can wait for now, but . . . it’s important.”  
  
She smiled up at him, reaching for his shoulder, and nodded. “I will.”  
  
He smiled, placing his opposite hand over hers that was still tucked under his arm, and pulled them towards the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chakoteya.net has been a lifesaver for checking dialogue, particularly for this chapter. Chrissie's doing important work keeping this up-to-date and running. :)


	2. "There are only two people missing."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The party after "Hunters." Kathryn tries to understand her grief. Chakotay tries (and fails) to not wind himself up.

Neelix had outdone himself. There was food on every surface in the mess hall, and comfort food for all: Bajoran kava rolls, oskoid leaves, Dreyan takka berries with cherel sauce, zilm’kach, macaroni and cheese, a Jiballian fudge cake, spicy paraka wings, Talaxian spiced skewers, plomeek soup . . . Kathryn could tell that he had availed himself of some of the emergency replicator rations that she had been stockpiling. He seemed determined to please everyone. She gave the punch bowl, which held a rich-looking blue liquid that sparkled in the light, a wide berth. _The last thing I need at the end of this mess of a week is alcohol, even if I didn’t think Chakotay had something up his sleeve._ She stole a furtive glance at her first officer, who was helping himself to a Volan dumpling.  
  
 _Come back with me after._ To what? Talk? They had _been_ talking, though she wasn’t sure whether he had been waiting for her to build up to something or not when Neelix had interrupted. Now that the moment had passed, she was second-guessing and third-guessing his feelings. Bringing up her letter had been his doing, and she noted that he had been doing it quite a lot. _Concern does not a romantic interest make_ , she reminded herself. _He asked about my letter, not if I was planning on seeing anybody_. She couldn’t completely dismiss the small, nagging wish that he had done.     
  
“Captain?” Chakotay’s voice cut into her thoughts. "I know that look. Where did you go?”   
  
She smiled back at him wanly and shook her head. “Here and there. Just mulling things over.”   
  
He nodded and took sip from his punch glass.   
  
“How is it?”   
  
He raised his eyebrows. “Potent.” He proffered it to her. “Taste it. I’m cutting myself off after this glass.”  
  
She took it and sipped. It was rich and heavy, viscous, with dark fruit undertones and little pockets of gas suspended in it that broke and sparkled, releasing sharp juice onto her tongue. She could feel the burn of synthehol rising up the back of her nostrils as she swallowed, singeing her sinuses.   
  
“Whoa!” She handed the glass back to him. “Don’t light a match.”  
  
He laughed, taking the glass. “That’s what _I_ thought.” He took another measured sip, then stepped closer to her and said in an undertone, “I’m going to go make the rounds. See if I can’t do a little recon on who actually got bad news, on top of the disappointment of mail call not being the regular thing we’d hoped.”  
  
She nodded. “That’s a good idea. I’ve been trying to figure out how to ask, or what to do.” She looked up at him, her brow furrowed. “Almost more than ever I wish we had a counselor on board. Apart from trying to give people some time off and extra hours on the holodeck, I’m not sure that there’s much I _can_ do.”  
  
Chakotay laid his free hand on her shoulder, a mirror of the gesture that she used so often. “You’ll do what you always do, Captain. You’ll leave your door open, you’ll listen when they come to you, and you’ll let them know that you’ve got their back. And really, that’s what they need.”   
  
Her eyes followed him as he moved off, stopping near small knots of people for a moment, toasting when prompted, smiling at good news, clapping Harry firmly on the shoulder when he saw him. Harry was effervescent after hearing from his parents, his smile infectious. Even Tom, whose message from his father hadn’t gotten through, couldn’t help but be swept up in his young friend’s joy. And B’Elanna was next to him, watching Tom guardedly, as though she weren’t sure that his smile was genuine. When Harry and Tom turned to each other, she saw her chief engineer and first officer exchange a short, significant glance. _Of course he told her what was in his letter_ she observed. _She would need to know. Do they all know yet?_ She looked around, but only a few of the former Maquis looked less than thrilled to be present. _Perhaps he’s waiting for a better moment, trying to let people have one grief at a time._ That seemed like something Chakotay would think about. _Or maybe he’s trying to take on his own first._           
  
*    *    *    *    *  
  
 _Come back with me after_. It had been an impulse, out of his mouth before he had properly thought it through. _What had he intended?_ Half-formed visions of everything from talking to her about her letter— _really_ talking, not just being satisfied with knowing what it was—to gently suggesting that they pick up where they had left off on New Earth if and when she felt free to do so, to spending a sleepless night making love to her in every way she could think to ask him to until they were both aching from depletion and deliriously exultant, chased each other around his mind. He smiled to himself at the idea, and at how quickly the conversation always escalated from real Delta quadrant practicalities to fantastic and immutable declarations of love in his imagination.  
  
Tuvok would say that the two of them had never behaved logically about this—all of that waiting and second-guessing and . . . _emotion_. Seven would say that courtship rituals were impractical, inefficient, irrelevant. That the most expeditious route to copulation was for two parties to assess their mutual interest and, if compatible, proceed accordingly.  
  
 _This isn’t what I’d planned_ , he thought, hating himself for where his mind had been too prepared to go. _This was supposed to happen, if it ever happened, weeks or months from now, not the day after she got a letter terminating her engagement_. He forcibly walked his mind back to his original thought. _If I ask about what was really in her letter, she will ask about what was really in mine, in the same detail. She won’t be satisfied with only knowing what it was. She will want to know._   
  
He shook his head mentally. _No. I’m not putting that on her. I will deal with that myself._   
  
_Ah_ , said a small, snide voice in his head, _but that’s what she would say if she were in your place, wouldn’t she? And didn’t you just thank her for not doing that to you? For not keeping it from you so she could torture herself with it when she’s alone?_   
  
He pushed the small voice firmly to the back of his mind, knowing even as he did so that it was right. _Not tonight. She doesn’t need that tonight, and neither do I._      
  
 _What’s your alternative? Telling her that you were hoping Mark really was the only reason she had left to keep you waiting? For honor and doing things right? Do you really think she won’t come up with something else?_  
  
The sudden, dark twist of his own thoughts soured the sparkling punch. _I trust her_ he thought firmly, abandoning the half-full glass to a side table. _I trust her to be honest with me. She has been so far._   
  
_But this is different._   
  
_It’s no different._  
  
His mind evaded his attempts to corral his thoughts. _What will you do if she refuses you?_  
  
He gritted his teeth. _Then I will be refused. She has every right to refuse me. It doesn’t change our command relationship._  
  
 _You don’t know that._      
  
 _I trust her. I trusted her years ago when we came back from New Earth, when she said that she couldn’t go back to the way things were. I trusted her when she said that she wasn’t willing to explore a relationship between us while there was a real chance that Mark thought that they were still engaged, whatever her own feelings were. We have both honored that. I have trusted her since then, and I trust her still. If she doesn’t want this, then she will tell me so._   
  
_And if she doesn’t? What will you do then?_


	3. "There's a reason that the manual is three centimeters thick."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chakotay winds himself up some more. B'Elanna calls him out.

The party was still going strong hours later when he decided that it was time to leave. A weariness was settling in his muscles from appearing cheerful on the surface, when underneath his hopes and fears for what Kathryn would do and the heaviness of his grief were sloshing together.   
  
He found her leaning against the bulkhead. She was staring out the viewport into space, but her eyes weren’t seeing the stars that flashed before them. He leaned in close to her.  
  
“Kathryn?”  
  
“Hmm?” She turned to him. He took her empty glass, setting it aside.   
  
“Is it safe to begin our ‘after’ yet?”  
  
She nodded. “I thought you’d never ask.”  
  
He smiled, but his tone was serious. “How do you want to play this? Can we leave together?”  
  
She frowned. “Shouldn’t we?”  
  
He looked disconcerted. “Well, you know what the rumor mill is like on this ship.” He gave a slight jerk of his head toward the center of the room. “Especially with Tom here. And you’ve tasted that punch.” He looked down, and then up at her again and sighed. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather people didn’t talk.”  
  
The warmth in her smile took him by surprise. It was changed somehow, even from a few hours ago. “That’s probably wise. Would you like to go first, or shall I?”  
  
“You first.” He smiled. “I’ll give you five minutes’ head start.”  
  
“I’ll see you there.”  
  
  
*    *    *    *    *  
  
  
He watched her make her way purposefully toward the door, winding a path through their crew members, stopping to lay a hand on someone’s shoulder or congratulate someone whom she knew had received good news. Her watched her deftly avoid Neelix, knowing that her plans to slip out gracefully would have been foiled immediately, and saw her manage to step into the corridor without drawing the room’s attention. He watched the absence she left behind after she had rounded the door frame, out of sight.   
  
“So Chakotay, when are you going to make a move?”  
  
He nearly jumped out of his skin. “Gah! B’Elanna!” He clutched his chest. “Don’t do that to me!”  
  
Her voice was casual, her expression bland next to him. “Don’t play games Chakotay. When are you finally going to say something to her?”  
  
He made the effort to keep his voice even as his heart rate returned to normal. “Say what to whom?”  
  
“That you love her. To the Captain.”  
  
He let out his breath in one gust. B’Elanna was at her most blunt after the news from his letter, and clearly had no interest in pulling punches. “Soon. But not tonight.”  
  
She pressed on. “Why not?”   
  
He turned to glare at her. “I can’t think of anything more predatory than pouncing on her right after she found out that the man she thought she was going to marry called the whole thing off because he thought she was dead, and then married someone else.”  
  
He had meant it to establish a boundary, and she had the grace to look away, nodding. “I figured it was something like that.”  
  
He looked at her shrewdly. “What do you mean?”  
  
“Crew performance reports came out today. _Two weeks early_.” The amazement in her voice was palpable, bordering on awe. “At first I wondered if she’d done them early for people who had gotten bad news to, I don’t know, make it feel like they got something nice in the mail as well. Not that it could possibly undo bad news, but it feels like something she would do. A vote of confidence.” B’Elanna swallowed. “I’ve never _seen_ someone get that much done in a morning, and that’s without counting pulling Seven and Tuvok out from an away mission gone wrong _and_ keeping us from getting sucked into a singularity yesterday. If it were anyone else I wouldn’t have believed it.” She gave him hard look.    
  
Chakotay said nothing, letting the silence between them deepen. His heart sank, the fears that he had tried to push to the back of his mind crawling aggressively into the space around it.   
  
B’Elanna continued. “I’m still angry Chakotay. I don’t think that I’ll stop being angry for a long time. But there’s nothing I can do about it here, except try to learn how to live with it. That’s all any of us can do. I’m . . .” she trailed off, and took a deep breath. “I’m worried that you’re repressing this. That you’re going to turn it into one more thing that you could have prevented somehow, even though it’s impossible. That you’ll do what you always do and shut yourself up in your head with it. That you’ll use our people dying to turn closing yourself off into some kind of noble sacrifice.”  
  
His breath caught, and he couldn’t look at her. Even as she said it, he knew how true it was. The temptation to immure his own grief was intimately close; the effort of both not burying it and not being able to let himself set it down was beginning to wear on him. She saw and heard it.  
  
“Gods, you’re so alike, the pair of you. You’d rather be eaten from the inside than admit that you’re about to come apart. Except . . . except _you’re_ patient. To a fault. I don’t think that she can match you there.”   
  
He let his breath out, the weariness getting heavier. “I know.”  
  
“So,” she pressed, “When are you going?”  
  
‘B’Elanna,” he started, and held up his hand when she tried to protest. “You’re right.” He shrugged. “I’m not going to contradict you. Don’t push me on this.”  
  
“But—”  
   
“Don’t push me.” His voice was firm, but even, and he turned to look her squarely in the face. “You can’t know how long I’ve been waiting for this.”  
  
Her eyes widened. She hadn’t expected him to be so honest, and if he was honest with himself he hadn’t expected to tell her until he did it. But there it was, out in the open.   
  
“You said it yourself: I am patient to a fault. I am _not_ going to push her into this. And I have waited too long to screw this up now.”   
  
She stared at him, like she was seeing him for the first time. "How long has this been going on?"  
  
He met her eyes. "Years. Since _Voyager_ came back for us, after we contracted that virus."  
  
She was silent, at a loss for words.    
  
“Come on. Let me leave you with Tom and Harry.” He hadn’t taken half a step before he turned back to her. “B’Elanna, I’m happy to know that you support this, but _please_ keep the talk to a minimum.” She nodded. “I know what a gossip Tom can be.” She rolled her eyes good-naturedly. “I want us to sort this out before we make anything official. If there’s anything to make official,” he added wistfully.   
  
“You must think there will be.”  
  
He sighed. “I _hope_ there will be. Strictly speaking Starfleet doesn’t forbid it, but there are precedents of disaster.” He laughed gently, hearing Kathryn’s voice in his head when he said, “There’s a reason that the manual is three centimeters thick. It’s . . . a lot to take on.”  
  
B’Elanna nodded. “Understood.” She smacked him playfully on the arm. “Let’s go Commander. I don’t want to make you late for your date.”   
  
He looked at her quizzically.   
  
“Don’t think I didn’t see you two talking over here in the corner and then somehow miss her making a calculated exit.”   
  
It was Chakotay’s turn to roll his eyes.


	4. The Waiting Game

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "This is the moment. This is when we decide. And he is terrified that I am going to refuse him. Again."
> 
> CW: discussions and depictions of grief, mentions of genocide (not depicted)

His fears had become a physical ache in his limbs, his grief a wrenching in his gut, his butterflies a full-blown panic. He could feel his heart hammering against his sternum, the blood pounding in his ears, his hands shaking when he didn’t hold them rigid. _This isn’t how I had planned this_ kept echoing in his own thoughts; yet every time he contemplated _not_ asking Kathryn to share his life, his heart, and his bed with him, dread cut through him like a cold wind.  
  
In the minutes that it took him to walk from the mess hall to his quarters his resistance to the weight of his own grief crumbled and he managed to completely wind himself up. He kept reciting his own words in his mind. _I am not going to push her into this. I have waited too long to screw this up now._ His dread returned, an icy fist clenching his insides.    
  
Kathryn was waiting for him when he reached his quarters. He keyed in his access code wordlessly, and they stepped through.  
  
“Well,” she smiled playfully, “I came back with you.” She reached for his hand, looking up at him. He knew the knowing look she wore—how long had he spent studying her face when he thought she wouldn’t notice—but couldn’t think of what might have put it there. “What was so important?”  
  
In response he tugged her gently into his embrace, pulling her closer than he had dared in the ready room barely hours before. He pressed his lips to her hairline, reveling in the softness of the strands against his lips, savoring the touch of her skin like it was the only thing tethering him to reality. He was sure that she could hear his heart screaming in his chest, but he didn’t care. He stood, suspended between his own desires: one to wait, to take things as slowly as he dared, and the other to tell her everything, to lay all that he desired before her and hope that it would be enough.  
  
_Reckless_ his mind admonished him.  
  
Then he felt the most delicious sensation he knew against his own lips. Kathryn was kissing him, without reservation, and her lips were warm, and sweet, and full of promise. He felt the slow strokes of her thumb on the side of his face, her fingers resting on the back of his neck as she stretched up to him. He pulled her as close to him as he could, relishing the feel of her body flush against his full height, knowing that she was wrapping both her arms around his shoulders and pressing him back into her. The memory of the last time he had kissed her, bathed in the sunlight on New Earth, came surging back to him; the immediacy of her lips tasting him, of filling his senses with her, blotted out every other thought.  
  
He broke their lips apart for air, dizzy from the cocktail of sensations coursing through him, and pressed his forehead to hers.  
  
“Kathryn—” His voice broke.  
  
“Chakotay,” she breathed, and pushed against him to look up into his face. There was no mistaking her intentions. “Yes.”  
  
Then every word that he had been fighting to keep silent came tumbling out.  
  
*    *    *    *    *    
  
He was a different man than the one who had said, “Come back with me,” and different than the one she had left in the mess hall. She could tell by his carriage as he came down the corridor that he had screwed himself up to something, and that something wasn’t right. To her surprise, this silenced the grief that had been intensifying steadily since her conversation with Tuvok.  
  
He keyed in his access code in silence, and they stepped through the door. It closed behind them with a soft _hiss_. She turned to him.  
  
“Well,” she smiled playfully, “I came back with you.” She reached for his hand. _We’ve got to start somewhere._ “What was so important?”  
  
Their hands touching was all he seemed to need. She felt him pull her to him, embracing her tighter than he had barely hours before. This felt different, not _desperate_ but _urgent_. She felt his lips against her forehead, his heart pounding against her own. _He’s shaking_ she realized, even as she felt the warmth of him seeping through her uniform. Then it burst into her mind in one glorious moment of clarity.  
  
_This is the moment. This is when we decide. And he is terrified that I am going to refuse him. Again._       
  
She could leave him in no doubt of how she felt, of what her intentions were.  
  
She reached up to press her lips to his, draping her hand gently around his neck and pulling him to her. The clarity of her own understanding shone in her mind like a beacon, and she couldn’t understand how she hadn’t noticed it long ago. In the last twelve hours, in the last two years, _home_ had shifted. She had been traveling toward it the entire time, hurling toward it at breakneck pace, but only now did she see where she had been going. She _was_ home.  
  
He broke their lips apart for air, a gasp that shuddered. He touched his forehead to hers, pressing the heat of his hands into her back.  
  
“Kathryn—” His voice broke.  
  
“Chakotay,” she breathed, and pushed against his face to look up at him. Even in the dim light she could see the mingled emotions in his deep brown eyes. She saw love and devotion, surprise and joy, terror and weariness and grief. And a glimmer of hope. “Yes.”  
  
_Yes to us. Yes to New Earth. Yes to whatever you’re trying to stop yourself from asking me. Whatever it is, I am with you._  
  
His breath left him in a rush, as though one word had knocked it out of him. “Not like this.”  
  
She blinked, taken by surprise.  
  
“It—” She could feel his breath quickening as his words tumbled over each other. She took his right hand in her own, bringing it from her back to her chest, gripping it firmly, linking their thumbs together. He put his left hand over it, as though afraid she would let go, and she put her own over the back of his, rubbing her palm over the smooth skin that she found there.    
  
“Slow down. Chakotay . . . Chakotay, stay with me. Not like this.” She shook her head. “Not like what?”  
  
He pressed his lips to the back of her hand, his words coming in halting fragments.  
  
“This isn’t how I imagined this, Kathryn. When I _finally_ asked you if you would let me love you, the way I want to until I die, it was going to be _weeks_ from now. When you hadn’t just gotten a ‘Dear John’ letter and I wasn’t spending every minute beating my own grief into submission.” He kissed her fingers again. “I was planning to court you. Openly. Let the crew think what they like. Hell, let them see every public minute of it, however long it took. I love you Kathryn, and I don’t give a damn who knows.” He pressed his face into the back of her hand, as though he could melt into it. “I wanted to spend our first night together, our first _real_ night together on _Voyager_ , making love to you like I thought I’d never get to again. Taking as much time as you’ll let me, savoring every exquisite second because I _know_ that it won’t be the last one.”  
  
He swallowed. “I was _not_ ,” he spit the word out with derision, “planning on being so wrung out that I can barely stand, or on having to keep shaking my head to try not to imagine the screams of almost everyone I know being murdered.” He closed his eyes, setting his jaw. She could feel the tension as he ground his teeth together. “It’s not at all what I had planned Kathryn, but it’s what I have.”  
  
She reached up, placing her hands gently on both sides of his face and lowering his forehead to hers again, feeling him wrap the full length of his arms around her. “It’s enough. It’s more than enough.” She pressed her lips the bridge of his nose. “No more waiting. You’ve waited more than long enough. Now, _finally_ , I can say yes to you, without any qualifications.” His eyes flew open at her admission, as though he didn’t completely believe what he was hearing. “Chakotay, if this is still what you want, if _I_ am still who you want, then I accept.”     
  
She let him tip her head gently backward as he closed the distance between their lips. His kiss was fierce and powerful, and she felt her feet leave the ground as he swept her up in the intensity of his relief. The need between them threatened to consume her, and she laughed in its face. Gloried in it. Lightly she let the tip of her tongue taste his mouth, then dip between his lips. A soft moan escaped him as she buried her fingers in his hair. Euphoria sang in her blood.  
  
He carried her— _all too easily_ , she thought—to the sofa, leaning into the curve of its back, cradling her in his lap so that he could reach his arms around all of her, gathering her to his chest. She could feel his heart beating against her hand, no longer a wild tattoo. His own hands had lost their urgency from before. Now they were even gentler, one catching around her waist and the other tangling itself in her hair. She let her head rest against his shoulder in the curve of his neck, felt him kissing her temple over and over again, his shoulders rocking both of them from one side to the other and back.  
  
“Chakotay.”  
  
He pressed his lips to her forehead. “Hmm?”  
  
“I love you.”  
  
He kissed her again. “And I love you.”  
  
“I know.” She reached up to brush her fingers over his chin. “You tell me every day.” She looked up to see his puzzled face. “ _Voyager_ has fifteen decks, and somehow you’re always standing next to me.”  
  
He smiled, looking a little abashed. “Until a few minutes ago, it was the only way I could say so.”  
  
She reached up to kiss him. “Now you can say it however you’d like, though I’d rather that you didn’t stop standing next to me.”  
  
“Not a chance.” He stroked her cheek with his thumb.  
  
She could feel the weight of his grief on him, how it physically drained him by the slump in his shoulders—he who usually carried himself so erect. He kept pulling her closer every time his arms began to relax.  
  
“What are you fighting, Chakotay?”  
  
He let his breath out, lightly shaking his head.  
  
“Don’t deny it. I’m watching it happen in front of me,” she pressed.  
  
He relaxed enough for her to sit up, to bring her face level with his. “You don’t _have_ to tell me, but I wish you would.”  
  
He took her hand, bringing her fingers to his lips, and sighed. “I’m fighting . . . the desire to take you to bed. Now. Part of me says it’s too soon, and part of me says it’s not soon enough.”     
  
“Then wait. Chakotay, I’ll wait.” She smiled. “There’s no reason that you can’t have _some_ of this go the way that you planned, if you still want it to.”  
  
“I don’t want it to, Kathryn. I want . . .” She wrapped her arms around him as he struggled for words, letting him lean into her even as he pressed her to his chest.  
  
“You don’t owe me an explanation.”  
  
“I know that, but I need to tell you. I want you to know.” He pressed his lips to the crown of her head. “I can’t ignore this grief, this _nuanka_ , and if I’m not careful I’ll let myself use loving you to run away from it.” He tightened his hold on her, but couldn’t fully keep the gravel out of his voice. “I’d change the duty rosters before you could blink, lock us in here for three days, make love to you until we couldn’t remember our own names, and let myself believe I had outrun it.” He swallowed. “It’s selfish, and greedy, and it would burn us both alive. I don’t want it to be like that.”    
  
In the silence that followed, he let his lips aimlessly caress her forehead. “Kathryn, do you know how long I’ve waited for this? Dreamt, hoped against reason that we might finally have this chance? And now that it’s here, I have to say, ‘Wait!’” He sighed. “Talk about cruel ironies.”  
  
She looked up at him. “I do know how long you’ve waited. When _Voyager_ came back for us I was terrified. I had let go of so much, and then we admitted how we felt and had started to build a life together, and then I had to let go of that too. But I couldn’t let go of you, and it only took me about thirty seconds after we got back to realize that it was because I didn’t want to.” He felt her shake her head against him. “Asking you to wait for me might be the most selfish thing I’ve ever done. You’ve been so patient Chakotay, and I had no right to ask that of you. To wait until I could break a previous engagement, an opportunity that might take years to come about, and you never once wavered. You waited . . . to allow me to do right by someone else.”  
  
“You honor your promises, beloved.” He brought her fingers to his lips again, and his kiss was reverent. “As though I could love you less for that.”     
  
“Maybe it’s my turn to wait for you?” She shrugged. “I’m not going anywhere that you aren’t coming too.”  
  
“Kathryn, you know how much I _despise_ making you wait.”  
  
“I know.” She took a breath, pressing her lips to the flesh of his wrist, letting him cup her cheek in his warm fingers, his thumb stroking her temple. “I wish I could help you carry this.”  
  
“I’m not sure that you can. I’m not sure that I know what to tell you.”  
  
“Let’s start with telling me what you need.”  
  
He nodded, and she felt his shoulders flex. “If I’m honest, I need to meditate.”  
  
“Would you like me to keep a watch while you do?”  
  
“Kathryn, this could take hours.”  
  
She removed his comm badge and kissed him briefly, before pushing herself up to sit. “Go. I’ll be here when you get back.”  
  
“Do you promise?” He pressed her palm to his lips.  
  
“I promise.”  
  
*    *    *    *    *    
  
He saw her comfortably settled on the sofa in the sitting area before closing himself and his medicine bundle in the bedroom. He lay it in front of him: the blackbird’s wing, the stone from the river, the _akoonah_. He breathed deeply, knowing what awaited him in a landscape of grief.  
  
_I’ll be here when you get back. I promise._  
  
_Prepare yourself to leave this room and this ship, and return to a place where you were the most content and peaceful you have ever been._  
  
He pictured the forest on New Earth, with light shining through the leaves and dappling the grass. He felt her hand firmly clasping his, as surely as it had when they had thought that they would live out the rest of their lives on that planet. When they had promised each other that whatever happened, they were in it together. The memory gave him strength.  
  
“ _A cuchi moya_. We are far from the sacred places of our grandfathers. We are far from the bones of our people.”  
  
_The sacred places have been leveled. The bones of my people are gone._  
  
He gripped the river stone until the ridges of its carvings bit into his flesh.  
   
The _akoonah_ brought him to a desolate, barren place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nuanka: Reference to 01.05 “The Cloud.” Chakotay uses the same word to refer to the grief that the crew experiences after Voyager gets pulled into the Delta quadrant.


	5. Meditations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You, more than anyone else, know how private Chakotay is.” They exchanged a meaningful glance, remembering the echoes of a conversation that seemed like both yesterday and half a lifetime ago. 
> 
> “I think he would rather get to tell everyone himself.”

Kathryn shifted on the sofa, tucking her feet under her, trying for the fourth time to get through the latest report. Her mind kept straying to the bedroom, where she knew Chakotay was wrestling with the beginnings of his grief. The hours dripped by, and slowly she managed to wade through more pages of more reports. Afternoon wore into evening.  
  
His comm badge chirped. “Torres to Chakotay.”  
  
“Janeway here Torres.”  
  
“Oh! I’m sorry, Captain.” Even through the comm link, Kathryn could hear her surprise.  
  
“He’s meditating B’Elanna. Is it something I can help with?”  
  
Another pregnant pause. “Could . . . could I see you for a moment Captain? It’s not urgent. I’m just . . . concerned.”  
  
She nodded before remembering that the younger woman couldn’t see her. “Let me know when you get here.”  
  
*    *    *    *    *  
  
In what must have been record time, Kathryn’s own comm badge chirped. “I’m here Captain.” Kathryn rose and let B’Elanna in. “Come in. Sit down,” she whispered.  
  
B’Elanna glanced toward the closed bedroom door. “I don’t want to disturb him.” She turned to face her, her eyes earnest. “Captain, I’m sorry to bother you—”  
  
“B’Elanna, you’re concerned about a grieving friend,” Kathryn cut across her. “Nothing bothers me about that.”  
  
She gave a small smile. “You sound just like him.” She straightened. “Captain, I don’t know how to say this without it being awkward.”  
  
“Why don’t you start by sitting down?” Kathryn crossed to one side of the sofa, and after a moment of hesitation B’Elanna joined her.  
  
“I’m concerned because I’ve seen Chakotay grieve before, or rather I’ve seen him run from grief before. It’s . . . awful. He walls it up inside, and somehow none of it ever gets out. He becomes a ghost. The first time I saw it we were in the vanguard of a task force to drive the Cardassians out of a colony on Panora. It didn’t go well for us. The Cardassians were too well entrenched, and we were ordered to pull out. We had to leave civilians behind.” She took a slow breath. “It was weeks before he even looked like himself again.”  
  
Kathryn nodded, and looked at her. “And this is orders of magnitude worse.”  
“Exactly. I want to make sure that he’s not, I don’t know, taking it out on himself somehow.”  
  
_Thank you_ , the words echoed in her mind, _for not keeping it from me so you can flagellate yourself with it when you think I’m not looking_. It hadn’t merely been knowing how good she was at putting up walls that had made him say it. Kathryn wondered if, in his own way, he had been telling himself not to do it as well.  
  
“Well, I’m not willing to speak for him,” said Kathryn, “but I think he’s trying to avoid it.”  
  
B’Elanna looked satisfied. “Good.” She turned to face her. “Captain, may I ask you a personal question?”  
  
Kathryn smiled. “I think I can guess what this is about.” She raised an eyebrow in an uncanny imitation of Tuvok. “You’re not the first person to ask me this today. But before you do,” she reached out for the younger woman’s hand, and B’Elanna took it, “Chakotay’s not the only one grieving, B’Elanna.”  
  
She set her jaw against her tears, so much like her mentor. “No, he’s not. I think that I’m the only one he’s told so far.”  
  
“I won’t ask you to talk about it, but if you decide that you want to . . . please. Talk to someone. It doesn’t have to be me.” She took a deep breath. “I have always been very good at walling up my own griefs. It’s poisonous. If you learn nothing else, from either of us,” and here she cast a glance at the bedroom door, “please don’t do that.”  
  
The younger woman squeezed her hand. “I won’t.” Then she ploughed straight forward. “Captain, about the two of you—”  
  
Kathryn squeezed her hand in turn, her lips turning into a wry smile. “I might have known.”  
  
B’Elanna smiled back. “Between the two of us, he’s a different man. Something about loving you just makes him . . . more. I could hardly tell you how. He’s _always_ been patient. He’s _always_ been strong. But with you, he’s . . .” She trailed off into her unfinished thought, searching for words that she couldn’t find, then shook her head. “What I’m trying to ask, Captain, is: when are you two going to make this official so that Tom will close the betting pool?”  
  
Kathryn nearly laughed out loud, and covered her mouth to stifle it. “Soon, I hope. But B’Elanna, keep it between us. I know how much Tom loves to gossip.” At this, B’Elanna rolled her eyes, shaking her head. “And you more than anyone else know how private Chakotay is.” They exchanged a meaningful glance, remembering the echoes of a conversation that seemed like both yesterday and half a lifetime ago. Seska. Rescuing technology from the Kazon. _Can you imagine what it must have been like for someone as private as Chakotay to be publicly humiliated by someone he loved?_  
  
“I think he would rather get to tell everyone himself.” Kathryn couldn’t help herself from smiling at her own words—couldn’t have stopped it from blooming on her face if she had wanted to—at her first real admission that they were happily, blissfully together. “I think he deserves that.”     
   
B’Elanna laughed, nodding. “Of course he would. And of course he does.”    
  
They both turned when they heard the bedroom door open. Chakotay appeared in the doorway, his movements slow, but measured and sure. Kathryn watched as B’Elanna leapt up from the sofa and all but tackled him in a bear hug. He looked taken aback, but hugged her in return.  
  
She released him, and her breath, in a swift exhale.    
  
“I came to make sure that you were okay.”  
  
“I think ‘okay’ is a lot to ask right now.” He gave her a small smile, sad and heavy, but there. “But I’m alive, and have every intention of staying that way.”  
  
She squeezed his hand. “Good. I’ll see myself out, since I’m satisfied that you’re still with us.” She smiled, and turned to give Kathryn a significant glance before leaving.  
  
Chakotay eased himself onto the sofa. “What was that about?”  
  
Kathryn leaned into the arm cushions, indicating for him to rest his head her lap. He did, without hesitation. “She was worried about you,” she said, running her middle and fore fingers idly through his hair. “I think she told me a little more than she meant to at first. She tried to comm you while you were meditating, so naturally I answered, and then she asked to come by and talk to me.”  
  
“What did she tell you?”  
  
“About being in the vanguard on the colony on Panora.”  
  
She felt him nod against her legs.  
  
“Don’t hold it against her Chakotay.”  
  
“Oh, I don’t,” he said, shifting to rest his neck against her crossed shins, gazing up at her. “It makes sense. I was a wreck when they told us to pull out of Panora. We left civilians behind—to what, we never learned for sure. I try not to imagine it anymore. I’m well aware of what the Cardassians are capable of.” He swallowed, shifting his gaze to the ceiling. “But she had never seen me like that before, and I think it rattled her. It would rattle most sane people.”  
  
He let them lapse into silence, taking her left hand between his thumb and palm and massaging circles into it. “Thank you,” he whispered, after a long interval.  
  
“Will you tell me if you want to talk about it?”  
  
“Yes.” He reached up, running his fingertips up her thighs to her hips and down to her knees, gently kneading the muscles beneath. “I don’t want to sleep Kathryn,” he admitted in a small voice. “I’m afraid to sleep, afraid of what I’ll see, but I’m so tired.”   
  
She rested both hands lightly on his shoulders. “May I stay with you?”  
  
“Would you? Please?” His eyes were insistent.  
  
“Come on.” She inched him up, then pulled him toward the bathroom, stopping in the doorway. “You take a shower, and I’ll be back by the time you’re done.”  
  
She saw a flicker of fear behind his eyes. “I’m going to get pajamas and a toothbrush, and a uniform for tomorrow. I’m not _going_ anywhere.” She rose on her toes to peck him on the cheek.  
  
“I’ll leave the door open?”  
  
She smiled. “I won’t be long.”


	6. Griefs, Observed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chakotay grieves for the Maquis. Kathryn comforts him. 
> 
> "Watching him fight his grief, watching him scourge his own heart into submission nearly broke her. How many times had she done the same, waiting until she was alone because she would not allow herself tears in front of anyone?"

He watched Kathryn leave for the second time that day, felt the absence of her tugging at the space she left behind. He leaned his back against the bathroom door frame, letting his breath out in a long, slow sigh, and slid slowly down to the floor. The solidness of _Voyager_ underneath him and behind him grounded him as he tried to order his thoughts against the exhaustion that was quickly reaching a critical mass. _Uniform off. Shower. Pajamas. Bed. She’ll be back by then._  
  
_She loves me._  
  
He let himself fall the last few inches sideways into the carpet of the living area, curling onto his side and pillowing his head on his arm. The feeling of hyper-aware free-fall that had been gripping him relaxed, scattering like nebula clouds in _Voyager_ ’s wake.   
  
_She loves me. Spirits. Thank you._  
  
He lay there, letting the warm glow of realization sink into him.  
  
Grief and its weight remained, in spite of his relief. Slowly he sat up, lifting himself from the floor to his knees, and then to stand. The leaden weight of his limbs reduced him to short, simple tasks. _Walk to the bedroom._ He did. _Comm badge and insignia in their case._ He opened the small carved box on the dresser with its blue velvet interior. He unpinned the two pins of his oval insignia from their fasteners and sat them on the left, then his comm badge on the right. _Jacket._ He removed it, and cast it over the back of a small chair. _Boots._ He sank onto the bed, and removed them too.  
  
The prospect of a shower, of the effort it would take to keep standing, was too much. He peeled off each sock in turn, first the left and then the right, and tossed them into the laundry. He wiggled his toes into the carpet, willing himself to find the strength to stand.  
  
*    *    *    *    *  
  
Kathryn didn’t hear the shower running when she returned.  
  
Crossing through to the bedroom, she found Chakotay sitting on the edge of the bed, pressing his hands into it as though he were trying to push himself up. She tossed her things carelessly over the pillows, and placed the four pips from her collar and her comm badge in her own case on the dresser, next to his.    
  
“I’m sorry Kathryn,” he said wearily. “This is as far as I got.”  
  
“Hey.” She turned and stepped between his legs, letting him rest his head against her solar-plexus. “Don’t worry about that.” His shoulders pressed into her hips, and his arms reached around the backs of her thighs. She let one hand begin long caresses across his shoulders through the thin grey material. He reached up to take the other and press the palm to his cheek. He put his lips to each of her fingertips, then her knuckles, running his own fingers up the back, over her wrist, and down again. His lips became more insistent, his kisses fevered, as she continued her hypnotizing strokes across his shoulders. Slowly, she felt a little of the tension leave him.  
  
“Here. Let me help you stand.”  
  
“Hmm? What for?"  
  
“I’m not letting you sleep in your uniform, Chakotay.”  
  
“Oh.” He pushed himself up to sit. “You’re probably right.”  
  
Slowly she disengaged herself from him, stepping back to the dresser and rummaging for pajamas. “These?” She asked, holding up a pair of soft, folded black pants.  
  
He nodded. “Would you like a shirt too?”  
  
He shook his head.  
  
The pants landed with a soft _fwump_ on the duvet next to him. He stood, with an effort, and began loosening the fastenings of his trousers. “I don’t suppose you brought your pink nightdress with you, did you?”  
  
She was putting hangers in the closet as she answered. “As a matter of fact, I did.”  
  
He blinked, startled. “Wait . . . you did?”  
  
“Well, it’s much more comfortable that what Starfleet issues, and I didn’t want to count on borrowing some of yours,” she answered practically before stepping back to him, knitting her arms around his torso and standing on tip-toe to kiss him. “Besides, I remember how much you like it.”  
  
He dipped his head to kiss her back. “It _is_ my favorite.”  
  
“Come on,” she smiled, gently working her fingers under his turtleneck. “The sooner we get _you_ into pajamas, then the sooner _I_ get into pajamas, and the sooner we both hopefully get something like half a night’s sleep between the two of us.” She worked the sleeve caps over his shoulders, and her hands into the sleeves. “Arms up,” she ordered, and he was happy to comply.  
  
Under her ministrations his body felt less leaden, less frozen in shock. “Pull them out.” He did, and felt her cup his shoulders protectively under his shirt, then slowly maneuver her fingers under the collar. “Head down,” she prompted, and he bowed to let her work the close-fitting neck over his head. When it was free, she lobbed it carelessly into the laundry.    
  
“Hey” he nudged her as she continued his work on the trouser fasteners, placing his hands on top of hers. “I am decidedly under-dressed here.”  
  
“Fine,” she said, smiling. “You can finish.” She wiggled her eyebrows, then turned to the closet where she had hung her own pajamas. When she turned back Chakotay was tying the band on his pajama trousers. She began dispensing with her own clothing, throwing her jacket and trousers into the laundry atop his.  
  
“Here,” he said quietly as she stripped off her own turtleneck and tossed it, inside-out, into the hamper. “Let me help.” He extended his arms around her, slowly releasing the three clasps that fastened her bra. He could feel her sigh of release against his chest as it loosened, and he soothed the place where the band had dug into her flesh with his thumb. He reached for her pajamas, rippling the smooth, slippery material between his fingers as he hitched it together to pull over her head. “Arms up,” he said, and she raised them, turning as she did to grant him access to the zipper along the side. She let her uniform trousers fall to the floor, stepping out of them and kicking them aside as he reached for her again.  
  
“Tell me what you need,” she said, pressing her palms to his chest as he gathered her into himself.  
  
“This,” he whispered into her hair. “You, being here. Letting me just—.” He broke off, gripping her tighter. She could feel the set of his jaw against her temple, and hear the hitch in his breathing.  
  
_He’s fighting it,_ she realized. _He’s fighting his grief_. She remembered her own, much older fight from when her father and Justin had died years before. Then, fighting her grief had seemed like the only way to avoid being consumed by it, sucked into a pit from which she thought she could never emerge again. Now, she knew better, knew that all the fight had ever done was tire her out.  
  
She reached up to kiss him, the soft pliance of his lips surrendering to gentle pressure from her own. “Come to bed with me.”  
  
He nodded, his eyes shut.  
  
She pulled back the duvet and sank into the plush pillows of his bed, relishing how it supported her weight in its soft, yielding mattress, then picked up the padd she had deposited on it. He climbed into bed next to her silently, without ceremony, and stretched his arms around her hips, burying his face in her side. She could feel him taking deep draughts of air, as though he were going to breathe her into him. She pressed her hand between his shoulder blades, then resumed her long strokes from one shoulder to the other and back. Slowly she felt his breathing relax, his body begin to sink into her, and into the mattress and pillows. Then his entire body started, tense, and she felt the jerk in his shoulders, heard the sudden intake of his breath. He pulled her closer to him.  
  
“Hey. It’s okay,” she soothed, imbuing her strokes with a little more intention. “I’m right here.”  
  
He nodded into the flesh of her hip. “What were you planning on reading?”  
  
“Status reports. Something I was hoping would make me sleepy.”  
  
“Nothing to do with the four cups of coffee you had this morning, is it?”  
  
She tapped the valley between his shoulder blades lightly with her fingers, then continued her lulling circuit of strokes across his back. “Nothing at all.”  
  
“Turning the lights off might help.” He snuggled closer to her, burrowing his cheek into her.  
  
She laughed lightly. “I can take a hint.” She stretched against his grasp to put the padd on the bedside table, and was momentarily surprised when he tightened his grip again. “Chakotay, I’m not going anywhere,” she whispered, before setting the padd down and turning back into his embrace, pulling her own pillows down and letting him rest his head on her shoulder. He pushed his nose gently against her collarbone.  
  
“I know. I’m making up for lost time,” he said, his breath warm against her skin. “Computer, lights off.”  
  
In the darkness, she drew lazy patterns on his hip with her fingertips. She felt his breathing deepen, his weight relax into her, and knew that he slept.  
  
*    *    *    *    *  
  
It might have been half an hour or half the night—she didn’t know for sure—that she lay holding him while he slept. If she had slept, then she remembered neither falling asleep nor waking. Half-formed thoughts, old memories, and echoes of her former life slid incoherently in and out of each other. After fighting a losing battle to force them into a semblance of order, she relented and let them come forward unbidden.  
  
Whatever of her own grief that remained refused to come forth. The strangeness of not crying was seeping into her. She felt vacant, suspended in stasis when she tried to summon grief. _Assuming that there was anything left to grieve_ , she thought. She sighed, remembering the griefs of the past. In their light, grieving Mark seemed trivial, unnecessary. Self-indulgent. Even thinking of it as grieving made the strangeness grow. Was it possible to grieve something lost this way, that had been fading steadily for years and was now only confirmed dead? Something that had been less and less real ever since they thought that they would live the rest of their lives on New Earth? Something that had never been prepared to survive the crucible of the Delta quadrant?  
  
The last remnants of her previous self, her ties to the Alpha quadrant, were being swept away.  
  
_That’s not true_ said a small voice. _You still have family._  
  
_True_ , she thought, _but it’s not quite the same_. _They’ve lost my father, and they’ve lost Justin, and until I can find a way back they’ve lost me too. I have to let them grieve until I can find a way home. I grieved them all when I thought that we would live and die in a new home, and never return to the old one._

She had been forced to let go on New Earth: of her captaincy, of _Voyager_ , of her family, and of everyone she knew, including her fiancé; she remembered well what that grief had felt like, but she had returned to that life against any hope. Even in returning to that life, to her role as _Voyager’s_ captain, she had not been the same. She had been forced to let go of Chakotay as her first officer too, and while they had returned to those roles seamlessly, it had not been the same. _They_ had not been the same, and she had admitted it to him barely an hour after they had returned.  
  
_For better or worse Chakotay, I won’t go back to the way things were._  
  
That he had vowed he was going to wait, in the moment, had nearly knocked her backward. That he seemed to have given little thought to ever breaking that vow in the years that followed stole her breath. The knowledge that even now, in his own grief, he was fighting to keep his own needs in check was too much. Her insides buckled as she remembered saying how she wanted to break off her engagement before she was willing to explore any possibility of a relationship when they returned to _Voyager_. How she meant it honorably, and he had taken it thus. How she didn’t want _them_ to begin before she and Mark completely ended. And the end had come.  
  
_I didn’t think that losing Mark this way was going to take parts of me with it._ The realization hit her like a force field.    
  
Hanging onto Mark had meant that she could hang on to who she had been before this command. Before destroying the Caretaker’s array to protect the Occampa. Before the Kazon, the Vidiians, and the Baneans. Before Seska. Before Q. Before New Earth. Before Borg space and severing Seven from the Collective. Before Braxton, and blowing the Prime Directive out an airlock. Before making all of the kinds of decisions that she had read about and thought about, but could never have actually imagined making until they arrived.  
  
_Before Chakotay._  
  
Loving Chakotay meant something very different indeed.  
  
_I was planning to court you. Openly. Let the crew think what they like. Hell, let them see every public minute of it. I love you Kathryn, and I don’t give a damn who knows._  
  
_Finally I can say yes to you without qualifications_.  
  
That answer alone told her that her grief wasn’t really about Mark.  
  
Suddenly he was awake, spasmed from sleep as though someone had pressed a live wire to his skin. The jolt was enough to jerk him up to his elbows, hauling air into his lungs, his eyes unseeing.  
  
“Chakotay,” she said aloud, trying to keep her voice low and even. “Chakotay, wake up.”  
  
He slowly registered the darkness around him, felt her half underneath him, and remembered where he was. He lay down again, curling into her as she reached her arms around him. “It’s all right. I’ve got you.”  
  
He pressed her closer, his voice thick with sleep. “Did I wake you?”  
  
She shook her head, bending to kiss his temple. “No.”  
  
He took a deep, steadying breath. “Kathryn, have you slept?”  
  
“No. At least, I don’t think so.”  
  
She shifted and he followed her, taking his previous position at her shoulder, pressing his lips against her neck. She could feel his jaw set again, the grit of his teeth, and heard him measuring his own breaths. Watching him fight his grief, watching him scourge his own heart into submission nearly broke her. How many times had she done the same: waiting until she was alone because she would not allow herself tears in front of anyone, and at the same time wishing that she had someone who would accept them, even when they could do nothing to prevent or stem them?  
  
She reached up to gently twine her fingers into his hair. “Chakotay?”  
  
“Hmm?”  
  
“May I ask you for something?”  
  
He returned his hand to where it had been resting on her breastbone. “Anything.”  
  
“May I have your tears, my love?”  
  
Kathryn felt him stop breathing, felt him tense like a bowstring for half a moment. Then the smallest sob she had ever heard escaped, in spite of him. She clutched him to her as his tears came thick and fast, soaking her sleeve, his entire body shaking. She rested the back of his head in her palm, her fingertips pressing small circles into his hair, bending to place warm, gentle kisses on every centimeter of his forehead that she could reach. Then he was sobbing into her chest, taking cruel, twisting gasps of air that mangled his voice and choked in his throat.  
  
She whispered his name over and over, a litany of soothing breaths into his hair, punctuating each by pressing her lips to him, gripping him as tightly as she dared. An hour passed, and then another, and she refused to let go of him. He spent his strength weeping, wringing every ounce of anger from muscles that warped in his anguish, quieting only as exhaustion settled into his bones, his breathing slowly returning.  
  
He looked up at her, expecting to see something in her face that told him he had crossed a line, that this was somehow too much, more than she had bargained for.  
  
She softly kissed the wetness from his cheeks. “Have you cried all your tears, my love?”  
He nodded. “For tonight.” Then he pulled her closer, and she saw a fresh wave of them streaming silently down his face. “I’m sorry. I spoke too soon.”  
  
“Shh . . .” she soothed him, rubbing deliberate circles into his back. “Don’t apologize, Chakotay. Not for this, and not to me.”  
  
She could feel him shaking his head against her. “Why did you choose me, Kathryn? You deserve—”  
  
“Stop right there.” He could hear a little of the command steel behind her request. She must have as well, because when she spoke again it was gone, and she was stroking his shoulder with the tips of her fingers. “You know very well why.”  
  
“Tell me anyway?” His voice was smaller. Timorous. Unlike him.  
  
She bent to kiss him gently. “Because I love you, Chakotay. Because once I admitted that I did, I couldn’t imagine choosing anyone else.”  
  
He nodded his acceptance. “Would you mind reminding me, periodically?”  
  
She smiled. “As in right now?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
She let him draw her into his embrace, pillowing her head on his shoulder as he pulled the blankets closer around them. She reached up to brush her fingers, feather-light, over his face, brushing the pad of her thumb against his lower lip. He kissed it lightly in response.  
  
“Like it or not, mister, you’re stuck with me,” she whispered.  
  
“How long have I wanted to hear you say that?”  
  
“I don’t know.” She reached her hands over his shoulders, pulling his forehead to hers. “Years, I imagine.”  
  
He nodded against her. “Kiss me, Kathryn. Like you did.”  
  
She did, stretching up to him and pushing him back to rest on the pillows. He pulled her on top of him without breaking them apart, his heart singing. It was only when he felt the stirrings of his own need that he pulled away. Her touch was gentle, her voice sure, when she said, “When you feel—”  
  
“Tomorrow?”  
  
After a moment, she dipped her head in assent, and he could hear her smiling at him through the dark.  
  
“As you wish, my love. Tomorrow it is.”


	7. Admissions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She looked down and sighed. “Do you think I’m not terrified that one day you’ll decide that this was a terrible mistake?”

The remainder of the night had been restless, punctuated with half-dreamt moments like elusive scents that were gone before he could name them. The only constant in them was Kathryn. Every time he had woken, or _thought_ he had woken, he had felt her there. The steady grip of her hand on his shoulder, her arm across his chest. The light dance of her fingers on his jaw. The comfort of her voice.  
  
He felt the warm weight of her against him before his mind had fully accepted that he was waking. Slowly he registered where he was, and the sensation of lying on his back. The gentle heat of her breath came in slow waves across his collarbone, the tenderness of her hand on his chest gently lighting every nerve like touch-paper. Waking with Kathryn in his arms was the only thing that convinced him that all of yesterday—that all of the past few days—had been real and not some impossible fever dream.  
  
_Finally I can say yes to you, without any qualifications._  
  
He bent to press his lips to her forehead. “Kathryn,” he whispered. “Kathryn.”  
  
She stirred in earnest, lifting her head to look at him.  
  
“Good morning, beloved.”  
  
“Mmm . . . good morning,” she mumbled, dipping her head to kiss his shoulder before burrowing into his chest, wrapping her arms behind him. “Did you sleep?”  
  
“In the end, I think so.” He let them lapse into a contended silence, reaching up to card his fingers gently through her tousled hair. “As much as this fulfills every dream I’ve ever had of waking up with you, you are preventing me from bringing you coffee beloved.”  
  
“Coffee can wait, Chakotay.”  
  
He raised his eyebrows. “Did I just take precedence over coffee? I’m honored.”  
  
“Yes.” She worked her hands deeper under his shoulders. “I can take coffee to the bridge with me.”  
  
“Last time I checked you could take me to the bridge with you too.”  
  
“True, but not like this my love.” She raised her head onto her hands to look at him. “This might raise a few eyebrows. I’d give it five minutes before the whole ship knew about us if we started carrying on like this.”

“If Paris is there, then I’ll only give it two.” He rested his hands on her back. “I meant what I said yesterday, Kathryn. I love you. I don’t give a damn who knows.”  
  
She pecked a kiss on his chin. “I know. And so does B’Elanna.”  
  
“How?”  
  
“She asked me point-blank yesterday.”  
  
“Funny. She asked me point-blank too.”  
  
She laughed. “Maybe it won’t be such a shock after all. I think I should tell you,” she said, shifting, “that I’m also under a strict request from Tuvok to let him know when our, ah, ‘negotiations’ conclude.”  
  
Chakotay’s face was incredulous. “I’m sorry . . . what?”  
  
“He came into my ready room yesterday morning, originally to debrief from the away mission, but made a point of saying, on no uncertain terms, that it was about time we sorted ourselves out.” She kissed his bemused grin. “I don’t mind telling you that he made a compelling case.”  
  
“How did he do that?”  
  
“In fairness, I wasn’t far off of doing it myself. But he did remind me that, although the Starfleet manual on personnel relationships _is_ three centimeters thick, it specifically does not prohibit us from doing this.”  
  
He laughed. “I never thought I’d see the day. I assumed that he would be one of the first to raise objections.”  
“As far as he’s concerned, he thinks that we’ve been cautious enough.”  
  
“I think that that’s as close as we’re going to get to, ‘Would the two of you just kiss already?’ from Tuvok,” he said, pulling her up his torso so that her lips were level with his own. “Which is exactly what I intend to do.”  
  
Kathryn smiled mischievously. “What happens if I kiss you first?”  
  
“Then I’ll have to kiss you back,” he said, his eyes gleaming as he drew her closer. “I give _at least_ as good as I get, I promise you.”  
  
Kathryn leaned her forehead against his, the rough grain of his voice tying her stomach in a knot. “Kiss me, Chakotay.”  
  
He kissed her with abandon, pulling her into him to enfold her in his entire body, twisting them into the pillows so that he could lie on top of her, cradled between her thighs. She could feel the heat of him soaking into her, feel his hardness against her own sex, and taste her own want in his lips. Need clawed at her insides, and she reached for his hips to grind her own into him.  
  
He made a studied, calculated succession of kisses from her lips down her neck to her chest. He pressed his lips between her breasts, inhaling her scent down to his toes.  
  
She cried out when he grazed her nipple with his teeth, taking it between his lips and sucking it with shameless ardor. “Chakotay, have mercy!”  
  
He stopped, laving her nipple lovingly with his tongue and kissing it before releasing her. “Did I hurt you?”  
  
“No,” she breathed, clutching at his shoulders for purchase. “I thought you said you wanted to go slowly?”  
  
“Mmm, that was for our first _night_ ,” he clarified, working his kisses steadily across her breast. “I still intend to, but I admit I had something very different in mind for our first _morning_.” He kissed between her breasts again, and the heat of his breath sent shivers through her skin. “Would you like me to continue?”  
  
“Please.”  
  
She gasped, arching into him when he took her in his mouth again, splaying his hands under her back. He groaned against her when she buried her hands in his hair, pressing him closer.  
  
_The time is 0700. The time is 0700. The time is 0700._  
  
“Damn it,” he swore, and Kathryn let out a disbelieving peal of laughter. He raised himself up on his elbows. “Computer, stop alarm. Re-set for 24 hours.”  
  
“Alarm re-set.”  
  
He looked down at her, tangled gently in his blankets, smiling. “I’m sorry Kathryn.”  
  
She reached up to caress his cheek. “We’ll have to wait."  
  
“Order me to finish, and I will.”  
  
She shook her head, fixing him with her piercing blue stare, and was suddenly serious. “No. No orders here. They belong on the bridge, not in our bed.”  
  
_Our bed._ His heart trembled at her words.  
  
She reached up to kiss him briefly. “Tonight. We’ve waited this long. Surely twelve hours won’t kill us?”  
  
He bent to kiss her back. “It won’t.”      
  
*    *    *    *    *  
  
The morning passed uneventfully. After relieving the Gamma shift, Kathryn gave Chakotay the bridge.  
  
“I’ll be in my ready room.”  
  
“I’m amazed that you have any work _left_ , Captain,” said Paris’s casually from the conn.  
  
“Mr. Paris, you of all people should know that a captain’s work is _never_ finished,” she chided, good-naturedly, exchanging a significant glance with Chakotay behind Paris’s back.  
  
“Report to me at 1500,” she said in an undertone. “Let me know if the recon you were doing turns up anything?”  
  
“Aye Captain,” he said, and she turned and left.    
  
The ready room was just as they had left it the day before. She put the old coffee service into the recycler and puttered about her desk, walking off her desire from before. She replicated new coffee and sat down to drink it, mulling over the day’s business. Unfortunately, the Kathryn of yesterday morning and two nights ago had done her job too well, and most of the busy work was already finished.  
  
She set to contemplating how to help Chakotay and the Maquis.  
  
_If I’m honest, they should probably ask me first, she thought. I don’t know how much it’s really my place to help them grieve unless they do. And yet I can’t ignore it. I won’t._  
  
Her frustration at feeling like her hands were tied settled in. 1200 passed, then 1300. Weekly reports from Engineering and Astrometrics systems came in as they came due, and she sifted through them, her thoughts dipping in and out of the problem that she couldn’t think of a way to solve. She paced between the desk and the coffee table, then from the desk to the replicator while the coffee pot re-filled, and then back and forth across the sofa’s raised platform. She sat to read the latest report, put the padd down and picked it up again half a dozen times before finishing, and then got up again to stare out the viewport.  
  
1500 came and went. At five minutes past, her comm badge chirped.  
  
“Chakotay to Janeway.”  
  
“Janeway here.”  
  
“I’m sorry that I’m late to report, Captain. I’m on my way.”  
  
“I’ll see you when you get here.”  
  
“Acknowledged. Chakotay out.”  
  
The door chimed two minutes later. “Come in.”  
  
He entered, and let the door close behind him before approaching. “I hope that you’re not wearing a tread in the floor on my account, Kathryn.”  
  
“No,” she said, sitting and indicating for him to join her. “I was just thinking. I’m hoping that your recon will tell me something new.”  
  
“As far as the recon is concerned, I haven’t heard about any bad news from the Starfleet crew, but the Maquis are obviously a different story. They’re all but queuing outside my door.” He sighed wearily, shaking his head. “I enlisted B’Elanna and Mike to help spread the word, as much to make sure everyone finds out as soon as possible as anything else. I told them to make sure that no one feels like I didn’t want to tell them personally, and that if they need someone to talk to that I want them to come to me. And I made sure that anyone who wants to read Sveda’s letter knows that they can come to my office to do so.” He rested his elbows on his knees, bearing the weight of his head on his hands. “I don’t know what else to do.”  
  
“Do you want some tea?”  
  
A beat. “That would be lovely.”  
  
She crossed to the replicator. “Have you eaten?”  
  
“No, but I haven’t really wanted to.”  
  
She returned with a steaming mug of tea. “Here.”  
  
He took it. “Thanks.”  
  
She sat down next to him, putting her hand in its customary place on his shoulder. “Right now that may be all that you can do. Like you were telling me yesterday, you’ll leave your door open, you’ll listen when they come to you, and you’ll let them know that you have their back.’ What more _can_ you do, really?”  
  
He smiled wanly. “Kathryn, you of all the people on this ship knows how maddening it is to hit the limits of what you can do in a situation like this.”  
  
She reached for his hand. “I do.” She squeezed, and he squeezed back. “I also know that if I don’t watch out for you you’ll run yourself into the ground over this."   
  
He met her unwavering stare, but couldn't hold it, and took a long draught of tea. He knew that she was right.   
  
"I don’t see how I can get involved without intruding unless _they_ come to _me_ , and I imagine that Tuvok would say the same.”  
  
“That leaves you with an awful lot of weight to carry on your own. A counselor could deal with this Chakotay, but I would never expect you to do that by yourself. And you can’t really expect me to let you.”  
  
He nodded, setting the empty mug down. “I just wish I knew that what I did was helping, but I’m at something of a loss. How can I think that I’m helping them through their grief if I’m still slogging through my own?”  
  
The ready room door interrupted them.  
  
“Come in.”  
  
The doors opened to admit Harry, and closed behind him.  
  
“Captain. Commander.” He inclined his head. “I apologize for interrupting.”  
  
“Not at all Harry. What can I do for you?”  
  
He straightened. “I’ve come to volunteer my services Captain.”  
  
“As . . . ?”  
  
“As an officer.” He cleared his throat, glancing sideways at Chakotay before continuing. “Tom and B’Elanna told me about what happened to the Maquis. I’m volunteering to take Gamma shift, if you need it. I assume that that there’s going to be a wake, and I don’t want anyone who needs to go to miss it.”  
  
Kathryn beamed at her young protégé. “That’s very generous Harry.” She turned to Chakotay, but he had started before she could say anything.  
  
He looked thoughtful. “You know Harry, that’s not a bad idea. Means a rough night for you, though.”  
  
Harry turned to face him. “Permission to speak freely, Commander.”  
  
“Granted.”  
  
“It’s the least I can do, sir. There’s really nothing that I could ever say that would make this better, for any of you. ‘I’m sorry,” sounds pretty hollow, even if it’s true. All I really want to say is, ‘This is awful, but don’t worry. I’ve got your back.’”    
  
Chakotay was solemn when he said, “Thank you Harry. You don’t know how much I appreciate it.”  
  
“I’m happy to, Commander.”  
  
“We’ll keep you informed,” Kathryn smiled. “Consider yourself on call.”  
  
“Aye Captain.” He turned, and left.  
  
Chakotay sat back, letting his head rest on the back of the sofa. “You know, I think that’s the answer. I don’t know how I didn’t see it before.”  
  
She shifted to rest on her arm, watching him. “Sometimes it’s hard to see anything when you’re the one in the trenches.” She took a sip of coffee. “I think it’s a great idea, and I’d like to get in line behind him to volunteer.”  
  
“I’ll settle duty rosters for tomorrow night.”  
  
She shook her head. “Let me handle them. You’ve got enough on your plate already, and I  . . . haven’t.”  
  
“What were you saying to Tom about, ‘A captain’s work is never done?’” His lips twitched in the beginnings of a smile.  
  
She elbowed him impishly. “Strictly speaking they aren’t, though Captain Janeway yesterday morning did so much that Captain Janeway today has to wait for some more to arrive.”  
  
He looked at her, startled. _B’Elanna wasn’t kidding when she said she’d never seen someone get so much done in a morning._  
  
“Have you made plans for dinner?”  
  
“Not yet, no.” He placed his hand gently on her knee. “I didn’t get far beyond hoping that you’d have it with me.”  
  
She covered his hand with hers. “I thought you’d never ask. Your place, or mine?”  
  
“Mine.”  
  
*    *    *    *    *  
  
If either Kathryn or Chakotay had worried about piecing together a crew for the following night, they needn’t have done.  
  
When word got out among the Starfleet crew that Harry had volunteered, there was a silent stampede of crew members following suit. They beat a steady path to the ready room from fifteen decks all afternoon, coming first individually and then in twos and threes. Far from needing to offer an incentive to take an extra shift, Kathryn found herself granting half-shifts and quarter-shifts to avoid turning people away. Everyone seemed to share Harry’s feeling that there wasn’t much that they could say to their comrades that would be of any help, but that that didn’t diminish the desire to _do something_ , if they could, that might make their friends’ and colleagues’ burdens a little lighter.     
  
Kathryn thought that she’d never been prouder of them.  
  
*    *    *    *    *  
  
The evening was wearing away when she chimed the door to Chakotay’s office.  
  
“Come in.” He looked up.  
  
“What were you saying about dinner?”  
  
He glanced quickly at the chronometer, and sighed. “1930. I didn’t realize it was that late.”  
  
She smiled. “I thought as much. Come on.”  
  
He rose, powering down the viewscreen and coming out from behind the desk, shaking his head. “Kathryn, I don’t have the first idea about what to do for dinner.”  
  
“I do.”  
  
He gave her a wary, skeptical look.  
  
“Don’t look at me like that. I’m not going to cook anything,” she said, nudging him playfully. “I just need your access code and permission to spar with your replicator.”  
  
“We _did_ say my place, didn’t we?”  
  
“At your insistence, I might add.”  
  
He smiled. “After you.”  
  
*    *    *    *    *  
  
She went straight to the replicator when they arrived. “Go sit,” she laughed at him when he came up behind her. “I’ll be right there.”  
  
He did as she bade him, chuckling. “Are you sure that you’ve got the hang of that thing?”  
  
“Yes,” she said, turning back to it and manually scrolling through a list of offerings. “Yours is much friendlier than mine.”  
  
He removed his boots, comm badge, and pip, and swung his feet onto the sofa.  
  
“Would you like wine?”  
  
He thought for a moment. “Maybe just a small one?”  
  
“Red?”  
  
“Is there any other?”  
  
She returned to him bearing two small glasses of red wine and a tray of fruit, and set them on the low coffee table. “Voila!”  
  
He smiled, the first broad smile she had seen since the morning. “You spoil me.”  
  
“For my own pleasure, I hasten to tell you.” She sat near his feet, placing her own comm badge and pips on the table and easing her feet out of her boots, breathing a sigh of relief as she let her feet flex into the soft carpet.  
  
He reached for her hand and tugged. “Come here. You’re too far away from me.”  
  
She let him pull her over him, settling easily into the cradle of his hips, dragging the cushion from the opposite end with her and jimmying it between his back and the arm of the sofa that supported his head before laying hers on his chest. He stretched to grant her access, and then reached idly for the nearest bunch of grapes. “This was inspired. Brilliant. _This_ is why you’re the captain.”  
  
She smiled, feeling the steady pulse of his heart through his jacket. “Perks of not cooking. We get to do this, _and_ we don’t have to have the Doctor on call.”  
  
“Mmm,” he nodded, his mouth full of fruit. He selected a grape, pulled it from the stem, and offered it to her.  
  
She took it from him, kissing his fingers as she did, and relished the tang of the sharp juice breaking through the skin. “Mmm. I _do_ have good ideas.” She reached for a small strawberry, pulling the tuft of leaves off the top and tossing them carelessly back onto the plate. “But _these_. These are my favorite.” She took the whole berry in one bite, pulling the stem out and returning it to the tray, her eyes shut in enjoyment.  
  
She opened them to see him watching her intently. “What?” She smiled.  
  
“Do you know how much I enjoy watching you enjoy things?”  
  
She felt her face color a little. “No?”  
  
He reached over to take another grape, then continued. “It’s lovely. Seeing you really enjoy something, especially when you think that no one’s looking.” He let his thumb trace slow circles in the small of her back.  
  
She selected another strawberry and pushed her elbows into the cushions on either side of him so their noses were level. “Here.”  
  
“Let me watch you eat it.”  
  
“Chakotay, you haven’t eaten since this morning.”  
  
He wiggled his eyebrows. “I’ll lay money that you haven’t either.”  
  
She rolled her eyes. “All right. You’ve got me there. But I ate one. Now you have to. It’s only fair.”  
  
He smiled. “Okay,” and parted his lips to take the berry she offered him. “Oh, you’re right,” he said after biting through it. “Those _are_ good.”  
  
She smiled and selected a raspberry, popping it unceremoniously into her mouth, and bent to kiss the tip of his nose.    
  
Chakotay closed his eyes again, relishing the weight of her on top of him. The warmth of her. How sated he felt just lying there with her. And yet, he couldn’t shake an inexplicable nagging feeling that he was running out of time. He thought back to that morning—what seemed like weeks ago—and pulled her closer.  
  
“What is it?” She crinkled her eyebrows together.  
       
He sighed. “I’m afraid that you’re always going to get me like this. Asleep on my feet, or at least halfway there. Emotionally spent. Having given no thought to dinner.”  
  
She never broke her gaze when she answered him. “Do you think that I’m not afraid of _exactly_ the same thing? That falling asleep together is all we’ll ever manage because we’re both so knackered at the end of the day? That one day, after years of putting the crew and the mission first, we’ll find out too late that it was all too much? For both of us?”  
  
She looked down and sighed. “Do you think I’m not terrified that one day you’ll decide that this was a terrible mistake?”  
  
His eyes widened at her admission, and he twisted his body to lay her next to him, his grip keeping her from tumbling off of the sofa. He let her bury her face in his jacket, pressing his lips to her cheekbone. They came away wet and salty, and he tightened his hold. “Kathryn, whatever happens, I will _never_ think of this as a mistake.” He let his thumb work a back-and-forth tread against her hair.    
  
“We’re going to have to be patient, which we both know that only one of us is good at,” she said, wiping her eyes. “Figure this out together. We can’t play this, ‘I’ll sort out my issues, you’ll sort out yours, and we’ll only come to each other perfectly,’ game.” She sounded like she was telling herself as such as she was telling him.  
  
Chakotay worked his arms underneath her and maneuvered them up to sit, taking their positions from the previous night. He smoothed her hair out of the way, and she reached up to kiss him. For a moment he let her, letting things unsaid flow between them, letting everything fall away except the taste of her lips on his, the softness of her fingers on his neck, and the tranquil delight of holding her.  
  
“May I have you as you are, Kathryn?” He brushed the tracks of tears gently from her cheek, and felt her nod against him. “And will you have me?”  
  
“Yes,” she whispered, reaching for him again.  
  
The desire to kiss her senseless was overwhelming. He indulged it, savoring their mutual appetite for each other, before he broke them apart.    
  
“Kathryn, there’s something we need to talk about. Well, it’s really something that _I_ need to tell _you_ , but I know how your mind works.” He pressed his lips to her forehead. “I think I’d rather start telling you, and then answer your questions instead of going at it all by myself.”  
  
“Chakotay, what’s this about?”  
  
“We have to talk about Seska.” He reached down to toy with her fingers. “We need to talk about Seska because I need to ask you for something, and I think that it will make more sense if we talk first.”  
  
She didn’t miss a beat. “Here, or there?” She inclined her head toward the bedroom.  
  
“Here,” he said immediately, shaking his head. “That thing you said this morning, about not bringing the bridge into our bed? I won’t bring her into it either.”  
  
Kathryn leaned back into the arm of the sofa, then reached for their wine glasses. She handed him his, and took a sip of her own. “Tell me.”  
  
He took a deep breath. “Seska and I didn’t see each other for very long. We’d agreed that things between us weren’t going to work out not long before you found us in the Badlands.” He sighed. “I was angry, and she liked me that way. I think I liked that my anger didn’t seem to scare her. In hindsight, it makes sense.” He sipped his own wine. “Anger makes you easier to manipulate, which I know is what she wanted, but it feels powerful. Seska was always attracted to power.”  
  
“What made you decide that it wasn’t going to work between you?”  
  
“Ironically the sex,” he said drily. “Sex with Seska was always one-sided. I imagine that getting me off made her feel powerful somehow, like she had control over me—not that she was necessarily wrong.” There was an edge to his voice that she hadn’t expected. “But there was no reciprocation. In hindsight, that makes sense too. Any climax of her own was a liability. She would have blown her cover as a Bajoran permanently if she couldn’t stop herself from swearing in Cardassian in the heat of the moment.”  
  
Kathryn reached for the fruit that remained, taking the peeled orange and tearing it into pieces through the fluffy white pith, and handed him one. He took it, sinking his teeth into it, releasing a small sigh of appreciation. She bit into her own, tasting the sharp juice, and waited for him to continue.     
  
He smiled to himself ruefully. “I think that she was hoping that it was going to be easier than it was. That I was someone who would just take what she offered and thank my lucky stars that she didn’t expect me to do anything in return. And that that would make it hard for me to let go of her.” He looked down to meet her eyes. “She didn’t count on me being the kind of man who wanted more.”  
  
His voice kept catching on itself, as thought the words he was forcing through were trying to keep themselves from coming out of his mouth. She cuddled into him, nuzzling her temple into his collarbone.  
  
“The handful of times we did were rough, secretive. Like being robbed. When I think about it now, it seems like a challenge. A dare. A battle of wills to see who could keep themselves from coming first.” He shuddered. “But most of the time she just wanted to . . . suck me off.” He winced. “I never felt safe. I never felt like I could say no. But at the time I never expected to feel those things anyway, ever.” His voice suddenly softened, and the light in his eyes became far away. “There was nothing—” he had to force himself to say the word, “— _tender_ about it.”  
  
She could hear the longing in his voice as it quieted into a whisper, and she reached for his hand. He took hers, gripping it desperately, crushing her knuckles to his lips, his tears flowing silently onto her wrist.     
  
“There’s so much about our lives that is difficult. Uncompromising. Hard-edged. So little that can’t be lost in an instant. So many things leave no room for error, or hesitation, or thinking about anything other than what has to be done.” He pressed his lips to he center of her palm, interlacing his fingers with hers. “It makes me love something soft, something tender, that much more, because I know how seldom we can afford it.”  
  
She raised her head to look at him. “And the . . . improvised mission? The one you took to get the quantum resonance oscillator back? Where she stole your DNA?”  
  
He pulled the neck of his uniform undershirt down so that she could see the small white scar above his trapezius. “There.”  
  
“May I?”  
  
He nodded.  
  
Kathryn stroked it with the pad of her thumb. “Does it hurt you?”  
  
“No. Not anymore.” He let the neck go, and she continued to soothe him through the thin gray material. “I think that knowing that she wasn’t successful helped. The Doctor told me.”  
  
She was quiet for a moment. He fancied that he could hear her brain whizzing inside her skull, so intently did she stare past his shoulder, not seeing what was before her. After a moment she blinked.  
  
“What were you planning to ask me for?”  
  
He tried to get up, but she was holding him down. “Chakotay, what were you planning to ask me for?”  
  
He couldn’t look at her. “It’s selfish Kathryn, and I have no right to ask for it.”  
  
“Hey.” She reached her fingers lightly under his chin and prompted him to look at her. “Ask me. Please.” She ran her thumb over his chin. “You might find that it’s something I already want to give you.”  
  
He gathered her to his chest. “I want you Kathryn,” he whispered into her hair, and she could hear the dark shades of desire in his voice. “I want you so very much. And I have to ask you to be patient with me.” He bent to kiss her. “I have no idea what this is going to be like, what old ghosts are going to appear. This . . . this may feel one-sided for a long time, because I don’t know how much I can take.” He pressed their foreheads together. “I trust you with my life, but I may have to learn how to trust you with my body, in the moment.”  
  
She reached up to twist her arms around him. “That’s not selfish at all. And I’m more than happy to be patient with you.” She kissed his jaw. “Promise me something.”  
  
“Anything.”  
  
“Promise me that you’ll tell me ‘No.’ Because I’ll pay attention when you do.”  
  
“Kathryn—”  
  
“Promise me.”  
  
“I promise.”  
  
She smiled, and reached for the small dish of strawberries, settling it in her lap. She chose one, twisted the stem out, and held it up to him. “Tell me what you want.”  
  
He took the tender berry between his lips, kissing her fingers. “I _want_ you in my bed.”  
  
“I’d worked that much out for myself, thank you,” she teased gently, choosing her own strawberry and looking into his eyes while she bit it. “Tell me what you want.”  
  
“I want . . .” She saw his words fighting the hunger in his eyes. “I want to taste you, Kathryn. I want my lips on you the first time you come.”  
  
She blinked, surprised. “That might be a first, you know.”  
  
His disbelief was palpable. “What?”  
  
“You might be the first person to have that.”  
  
“But . . . neither of them . . . never?” he whispered. She could hear the shock.  
  
“Oh no, not never. That is . . .” she said, looking down and taking the last strawberry from the bowl. “Justin wasn’t particularly adept at it, and Mark never really enjoyed it.” She deposited the bowl on the table along with the last berry’s stem, and looked up at him, proffering it to his lips.  
  
He took it in his hand, and offered it to her in turn. “Please.”  
  
She let him feed it to her, dipping her head to his fingers and taking it gently. He stroked her lips with his thumb when she did.  
  
“Kathryn, I can’t believe that no one’s . . .” He trailed off, shaking his head.  
  
“Apparently it’s a lot of bother,” she said wryly.  
  
He took her head in both of his hands, his fingers curling against the back of her neck. “No it isn’t,” he whispered, and his breath was labored. “Spirits Kathryn, no it isn’t.”  
  
He was kissing her in earnest, tasting the memory of strawberries and the echoes of that morning’s lovemaking cut short. “Come to bed with me, Kathryn.”  
  
“Are you—”  
  
“Yes.” He released her to look into her face. “Please. After all,” he added as he raised them both from the sofa, sliding her down his body to land on her feet, “it is tomorrow.”


	8. Tomorrow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "He had known, in spite of his fantasy, that this would be nothing like he had ever imagined or half-dreamed in the dead hours. Hardly anything with Kathryn ever was. So often, it was infinitely better."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for your infinite patience while I worked on this.
> 
> *Update: I've added a short section to Chapter One (as of 7/6/19) as well. It smooths a few of the AU and continuity details out.
> 
> **Disclaimer: Those opposed to smut should be prepared to skip this chapter.

Kathryn hadn’t thought that fruit and wine would lead to admissions of fear and failures and old ghosts. Her thoughts on dinner hadn’t gone beyond lying in his arms on the sofa and playfully feeding each other, finally enjoying a closeness that they had been denying themselves for years. Vague possibilities of tumbling into bed with him or falling asleep where they lay had both seemed equally likely when she entered his office and found him still working. As much as he had done that day and the day before, and as much as she knew that he was going to take on tomorrow, she wouldn’t have blamed him if he had put off a sleepless night for at least a week, no matter how much either of them wanted it.    
  
She knew all of his fears about not being adequate—they were as old and grimly familiar as her own—but she hadn’t expected that admitting her own fears would have her crying against his chest and have him holding her close to him to keep her from falling off the couch. Then, their mutual kisses and his own admission began to chase her fears away. The strength of his hands against her back, the softness of his lips against her cheekbone, the sincerity of his words, each in turn banished her anxieties from conscious thought.  
  
And then Chakotay said that they needed to talk about Seska.  
  
She couldn’t have made herself dissuade him if she’d wanted to. A small part of her was glad that he had been the one to broach the subject. A legion of things she wanted to know, of things that she had never felt permitted to ask, queued up in her brain, and then scrambled for her attention. She disciplined them firmly, unwilling to ask until he was ready.  
  
“Here, or there?” she asked.  
  
“Here,” he insisted, holding her closer. “That thing you said this morning, about not bringing the bridge into our bed?” His voice took on a defiant edge. “I won’t bring her into it either.”  
  
Kathryn reached up to run the backs of her fingers over his jaw, then leaned back from him into the arm of the sofa. She reached for their wine glasses, careful to keep herself balanced on his lap as she did, and handed him his before taking a sip of her own. “Tell me.”  
  
He did, and in more detail than she had ever imagined to know. The more she learned about Seska, the more she was left in shock at the depths of the Cardassian woman’s manipulative capabilities, and that she hadn’t been able to inflict more suffering than she had on the man speaking aloud in the dim light. Yes, he had had closure, had covered her face for the last time before she was buried over Hanon IV, but Kathryn saw that even years later her ghost could still rattle its chains.    
  
She reached for the orange on the table, as much to have something to do with her hands as anything else, when Chakotay admitted what their relationship had been like. B’Elanna’s own words kept coming back to her in waves, more significant each time: _He found out that everything he knew about her was a lie . . . Can you imagine what it must have been like for someone as private as Chakotay to be publicly humiliated by someone he loved? . . . This is his way of taking responsibility. In his mind, he's trying to protect the rest of us from a dangerous situation that he thinks he created . . . He would never tell you any of this himself._  
  
_Oh, how far we’ve come,_ she thought, wordlessly passing him segments of the orange that she had been systematically dismantling in her lap while she absorbed his words.    
  
He smiled to himself ruefully as he chewed. “I think that she was hoping that it was going to be easier than it was.” She could hear him trying to keep his voice nonchalant, matter-of-fact. “That I was someone who would just take what she offered and thank my lucky stars that she didn’t expect me to do anything in return. And that that would make it hard for me to let go of her.” He looked down to meet her eyes, and in the depths of his she saw something that she couldn’t place. “She didn’t count on me being the kind of man who wanted more.”  
  
She could hear his voice catching on itself, as though he were forcing the words through in single file. Having exhausted her supply of orange slices, she cuddled into him, nuzzling her temple into his collarbone. She had had no doubts since their stay on New Earth that this was the kind of man he was, but hearing him say it felt like a different kind of knowledge entirely. _Intimacy_. The word rose unbidden to the surface of her thoughts, and lay quietly, unspoken, between them. She would have curled up inside him if she could have, if she thought it could have dulled the pain that she knew was behind what he was saying. She set her tongue against the back of her teeth at what he described next. _When I think about it now, it seems like a challenge. A dare. A battle of wills to see who could keep themselves from coming first._ She felt the small tremor pass through his shoulders, and pressed her hand to his chest.  
  
“I never felt safe. I never felt like I could say no. But at the time I never expected to feel those things anyway, ever.” His voice suddenly softened, and the light in his eyes became far away. “There was nothing—” he had to steel himself to say the word, “— _tender_ about it.”  
  
She could hear the unfettered longing in his voice as it quieted into a whisper, and she reached for his hand. He took hers, gripping it desperately, crushing her knuckles to his lips, his silent tears flowing onto her wrist.     
  
“There’s so much about our lives that is difficult,” he continued, his voice constantly close to breaking. “Uncompromising. Hard-edged. So little that can’t be lost in an instant. So many things leave no room for error, or hesitation, or thinking about anything other than what _has_ to be done.” He pressed his lips to the center of her palm, interlacing his fingers with hers. “It makes me love something soft, something tender, that much more, because I know how seldom we can afford it.”  
  
She let the silence between them deepen, let the stark truth wash over her, and raised her head to look at him. “And the . . . improvised mission? The one you took to get the quantum resonance oscillator back? Where she stole your DNA?”  
  
He pulled the neck of his uniform undershirt down, revealing a small white scar above his trapezius. “There.”  
  
“May I?”  
  
He nodded.  
  
Kathryn stroked it slowly with the pad of her thumb, imagining what carrying that knowledge for so long must have cost him. “Does it hurt you?”  
  
“No,” he said evenly, shaking his head. “Not anymore.” He let the neck go, and she continued to soothe him through the thin gray material. “I think that knowing that she wasn’t successful helped. The Doctor told me,” he said, in response to her furrowed brow.  
  
She nodded and was quiet for a moment, sifting through the details of all that he had said. Individually they were all things that she had wanted to know, and a few were things she hadn’t yet found the courage to ask him about. Together they explained a lot—perhaps more than he realized. The only thing missing was what he wanted to ask her for, and how this would make it all make sense. She had known from the beginning that they wouldn’t just jump into bed. That wasn’t his way. _Perhaps this is where he asks me to wait, to put this off for another night,_ she thought. It seemed logical.  
  
“What were you planning to ask me for?”  
  
He tried to move out from under her, then seemed to think better of removing her from his lap and ran a hand distractedly through his hair. “Chakotay, _what_ were you planning to ask me for?”  
  
He wouldn’t look at her. “It’s selfish Kathryn, and I have no right to ask for it.”  
  
“Hey.” She reached her fingers lightly under his chin and prompted him to look at her, which he did reluctantly. “Ask me. _Please_.” She ran her thumb over his chin. “You might find that it’s something I already want to give you.”  
  
He gathered her to his chest. She could feel the urgency returning to his fingers. “I want you Kathryn,” he whispered into her hair, and she could hear the dark shades of desire in his voice. “I want you so very much. And I have to ask you to be patient with me.” He bent to kiss her, and she accepted him gladly. “I have no idea what this is going to be like, what old ghosts are going to appear."  He let his breath out in a frustrated rush. "Sex may feel one-sided for a long time, because I don’t know how much I can take.” He pressed their foreheads together, lightly stroking her temple with his thumb, and she felt her heart quaver at the tenderness of his touch. “I trust you with my life, but I may have to learn how to trust you with my body, in the moment. It has a long memory of this that you had no hand in making.”  
  
She reached up to twist her arms around him. “That’s not selfish at all. And I’m more than happy to be patient with you.” She kissed his jaw up to his earlobe, the sound of his breath sending chills up her spine. “Promise me something.”  
  
“Keep kissing me like this,” he said, his voice tightening, “and I’ll promise you anything.”  
  
“Promise me that you’ll tell me ‘No.’ Because I’ll pay attention when you do.”  
  
“Kathryn—”  
  
“Promise me,” she said firmly, and drew away to look at him.  
  
“I promise.”  
  
She smiled, and reached for the small dish of strawberries, settling it in her lap. She chose one, twisted the stem out, and held it up to him. “Tell me what you want.”  
  
He took the small, tender berry between his lips, kissing her fingers. “I _want_ you in my bed.”  
  
The thrill of that knowledge, of hearing him say it so openly after swallowing it back for so long, made her toes curl in anticipation. “I’d worked _that_ much out for myself, thank you,” she teased gently, choosing her own strawberry and looking into his eyes while she bit it. “Tell me what you _want_.”  
  
“I want . . .” She saw his words fighting the hunger in his eyes, and silently granted him permission. _Say it. Tell me. Please._ “I want to taste you, Kathryn,” he said, and there was no mistaking the desire in his voice. “I want my lips on you the first time you come.”  
  
Her eyes widened. _He can’t be serious._ “That might be a first, you know.”  
  
The words were out of her mouth before she had realized that she was saying them. _While we’re making intimate admissions, here’s one I didn’t think I’d be making tonight—or ever._  
  
His disbelief was palpable. “What?”  
  
_No going back now._ She swallowed, and pressed on. “You might be the first person to have that.”  
  
“But . . . neither of them? Justin? Mark? . . . _Never_?” he whispered.  
  
She could hear the shock in his voice, the genuine bewilderment.  
  
“Oh no,” she amended, “Not ‘never.’ That is . . .” she said, looking down and taking the last strawberry from the bowl as an excuse to shut her eyes for a moment, and sighed. “Just not effectively." She arched an eyebrow, half dismissal and half bravado. "Justin wasn’t particularly adept at it, and Mark never really enjoyed it,” she said, more to the strawberry than to him.  
  
_Justin was an old memory—the one time she recalled that she had ever lied to him. “Justin, stop. Please. It’s not going to get me there.” It had been an outright lie and she knew it, but in the moment she had been more interested in finding ground that they could meet on than in turning their lovemaking into a lesson in what he needed to know. It felt too much like trying to change him, to mold him into an idea of a perfect someone she wanted, and surely he would have the rest of their marriage to figure it out. He had been an attentive lover, but had never seemed to miss it, and had never asked again._  
  
_Mark, in her memory, had never tried. He had always said that he preferred kissing her, and she had rarely, if ever, refused him. He had been comfortable. Sex with him had always been familiar, predictable, controlled—never passionate, never ardent, and seldom spontaneous. Her desire to return to that had died without warning on a far-away planet in the Delta Quadrant. Her desire lived in a pair of brown eyes that sparkled when they saw her, a pair of capable hands that took the soreness from her shoulders, a headboard, a bathtub, and a declaration of devotion that still brought her to tears._     
  
She deposited the bowl on the table along with the last berry’s stem, and looked up at him, proffering the small red fruit to his lips.  
  
He took it from her, looking at it for a moment, and offered it to her in turn. “Please.”  
  
She let him feed it to her, dipping her head to his fingers and taking it gently. He stroked her lips with his thumb when she did. Desire pooled in the pit of her stomach.  
  
“Kathryn, I can’t believe that no one’s . . .” He trailed off, shaking his head. His voice was hoarse.  
  
“Mmm. Apparently it’s a lot of bother,” she said against his fingers.  
  
She had meant it offhandedly, as a way of gently bringing him somewhere lighter and safer, to soft caresses and quiet laughter, away from the halls where the demons of his past held court.  
  
When he kissed her his lips were ardent, purposeful, and earnest, his fingers curling against the back of her neck. He couldn’t hide his craving for her in the essence of his soft breath. “No it isn’t,” he whispered, and his words were labored as she pulled him closer to her. “Spirits Kathryn, no it isn’t.”  
  
The need they had both denied that morning returned, if indeed it had ever left. Her stomach soared in the face of its strength. “Come to bed with me, Kathryn.”  
  
“Are you—”  
  
“Yes.” He released her to look into her face. “Please. After all,” he added with a small smile as he raised them both from the sofa, sliding her down his body to land on her feet, “It is tomorrow.”  
  
*    *    *    *    *  
  
Chakotay led her quietly through to his bed, which he had made with precision that morning, and pulled her close to him, dispensing with her jacket and allowing it to fall, forgotten, to the floor.  
  
“You know,” she said coyly as she undid the front of his jacket to slip her arms around him underneath it, feeling the heat of him through the thin, gray turtleneck and leaning into their closeness with relish, “Between how much we _didn’t_ sleep last night _and_ a late night tonight, _and_ with the prospect of a wake tomorrow, I was sure that you were going to ask me to put this off.”    
  
He pressed his lips to her forehead as he pulled off his jacket, folding his arms around her waist and rocking them both gently left and right. “Do I detect a subtle request?”  
  
She laughed. “No. You know me better than that. I just thought—”  
  
“Kathryn,” he said, giving her an appraising look, “The night is young, and the only thing that will prevent me from spending _at least_ the next hour making love to you is you specifically asking me not to.” He brought her palm to his lips, his eyes closing as he let her touch fill his senses. “I meant it when I said that I wanted to take as long as you’ll let me.” He trailed kisses from her palm to the inside of her wrist, and whimpered when she buried her fingers in his hair and pressed her lips to his temple. “Kathryn, please,” he begged. “Tell me you want this. _Please_.”    
  
It hit her like she’d missed a step going down stairs. His years of silent devotion. His kisses like reverent prayers. _“May I have you as you are, Kathryn? And will you have me?”_  
  
_He loves me._  
  
“Yes.” Her voice broke. “Yes Chakotay, I want this.”  
  
He looked down at her. “Kathryn, you’re crying.” He kissed the tears from her face, and pressed his forehead to hers. “Too fast?” he asked quietly.  
  
She shook her head against him, her hands desperate on his shoulders.  
  
He kissed her forehead. “Too much?”  
  
She shook her head again.  
  
He kissed her again. “Too soon?”  
  
She swallowed. “No.”  
  
He hugged her close, resting his hand softly against the back of her head. “What is it?”  
  
“I’m . . . not used to this.”  
  
He let his fingers massage little circles into her head and the small of her back. “Tell me.”  
  
“To—.” She reached for his hand and pressed the backs of his fingers to her lips, the only thing that she could think to do that might _make_ words that tasted like choking come out of her mouth. “To being wanted like this,” she finished, fighting for control of her voice. “I don’t know that anyone has ever wanted me like this. At least, not that they’ve ever told me.” She pressed her cheek into the palm of his hand, and couldn’t look at him. “I’ve wanted everything that you’ve ever promised me. I’ve wanted it so much that it hurts, so much that I’ve cried myself to sleep thinking that asking you to wait meant that I’d lost you forever. But even now I can’t make myself believe that I deserve it.”  
  
“Kathryn.” He nudged her face gently toward him but she resisted, pushing back against his hand. “Kathryn, look at me.”    
  
After a moment she did, and he gently wiped the tears from under her eyes.  
  
“Let’s put that on the list of things that _I’m_ going to worry about,” he said softly, raising his hand to her, palm forward. She gave a small smile and raised her own, pressing their palms together and interlacing their fingers. “After all, aren’t every last one of those things _mine_ to give _you_? Whether you believe that you deserve them or not?”  
  
He drew their entwined hands to his lips and kissed her fingertips, soothing the back of her thumb with the flesh of his own. “Anything that you leave in my keeping is safe, Kathryn. Your heart most of all.”  
  
She released their hands to lay her head against him, and he rested his palm against her hip. “I love you, Kathryn. Please let me give you this, if you’ll have it.”  
  
She nodded, looking up at him. “Go slowly.” He smiled. “And—” she broke off, then whispered, “Stay close to me.”  
  
He bent and swept her up under her knees. She was as slight as he remembered, and his heart leapt as she reached her arms around his neck.  
  
“Kathryn,” he said softly through her kisses, “I would have it no other way.”  
  
He lay them in the middle of his soft, yielding mattress, fixing a pillow under her head and his arm under her neck, stretching himself out against her and letting her pull him closer. He stopped breathing when she caught his lower lip lightly between her teeth, and let her bend his body into hers.  
  
She felt him gently working his fingers under her turtleneck, and began taking off his in turn, running her fingers up the sides of his ribs to his shoulders. Chakotay propped himself over her on his elbows.  
  
“Do that again.”  
  
Kathryn’s eyes gleamed, and she smiled. “What? This?” She slipped her hands under the band of his uniform trousers, and drew her fingers up his sides lightly at first, then more urgently. He closed his eyes, and she couldn’t hide her delight at hearing his breath catch as she reached his shoulder blades.  
  
He nodded. “Yes. _That_.”  
  
She continued pulling his shirt over his shoulders and over his head. She surprised herself, to learn how much she loved seeing the cold blue-gray material come off and reveal his skin beneath. The lean muscles conditioned by hours of boxing, climbing, and hoverball. The shoulders that she knew bore so many invisible cares. The particular strong brown that she had never seen anywhere else.  
  
“What is it?”  
  
She was gazing at his shoulder with the rapt attention that he associated with stellar phenomena.  
  
“Chakotay . . . would you think it was just a come-on if I told that I thought your skin was beautiful?”  
  
“I think we’re a little past come-ons,” he said quietly, grazing her cheek with his lips and working her own grey turtleneck off of her, “so no, I wouldn’t.” He paused. “Do you?”  
  
“Yes.” She ran her fingers down the side of his neck, over his shoulder, and back again, watching his goosebumps raise as she pushed her fingers over the back of his neck and into his hair. “Do you like that?”  
  
“Yes,” he gasped, bending to kiss her. “Yes, I do.”  
  
She smiled against his lips. “Why do you like it?” She ran her fingers over his forehead, and saw him look down. “Chakotay, are you blushing?”  
  
“By the feel of it, I’m sure I am,” he said, and she let him press his cheek into her palm.  “It . . . it’s something you could never do on the bridge,” he confessed, finally meeting her eyes. “It reminds me that we’re here, that we’re alone, and that you want this.” He swallowed. “And every time you’ve done it so far, you’ve followed it by kissing me so that I can’t think. Which I also like very much.”  
  
She did as she knew he loved, pulling him down to meet her parted lips, splaying her hands against the wide, warm expanse of his back, and felt him bury his hands in her hair as he kissed her back. _He’s right_ , she thought. _It’s a private intimacy_.  
  
She broke them apart, pushing him up. “Stand. I want to get these trousers off of you intact.”  
  
He obeyed, pulling her up with him. She made quicker work of his than he did of hers, and he paused to kick them off carelessly before finishing. He removed hers deliberately slowly, kneeling in front of her to take each of her feet out of them in turn. “Sit down.”  
  
She did, her eyes following the light motions of his hands. He removed her socks and tossed them on top of their trousers, then began kneading the bottom of her right foot with his knuckles. She leaned back on her elbows, sighing as he worked his way to her ankle and into her calf muscles.  
  
“Oh, that feels good,” she breathed, closing her eyes and letting the steady, hypnotic motions of his hands wash over her, sending hot pulses of need shooting into her core.  
  
“Remember when I told you how much I like watching you enjoy things?” he asked as his hands reached her knee, and he kissed her just above it. She nodded, and could hear his smile. “This definitely qualifies.”    
  
He had once imagined, half in a dream, of kneeling before her and kissing her feet before he made love to her for the first time. Of telling her that he would worship her if she required it, and would do it gladly if she would only let him drown himself in her.  
  
He had known, in spite of his fantasy, that this would be nothing like he had ever imagined or half-dreamed in the dead hours. Hardly anything with Kathryn ever was. So often, it was infinitely better.  
  
Chakotay turned his attention to her left foot, repeating his motions with the same care. Anticipation coiled inside him, gnawing at his insides, making him hungrier for her. He felt the yawning scream of his need inside of him, the demanding hardness of his arousal, as he kissed, licked, and nipped his way up the soft skin on the inside of her thighs. His chosen path led him to press his face into the sensitive joining of her hip through the black lace that she wore, the texture rasping at him. He continued, laying her back before him, burying his lips in the relenting tenderness of her stomach, replacing his kisses inside her thighs with the strong, careful strokes of his fingers.     
  
“I think you’re teasing me,” she chided him, feeling the slick wetness of her own need against him.    
  
He pressed his lips to her skin, working his fingers underneath her to release her bra fastenings, and she drew her arms out of the straps, letting him toss the black material carelessly aside.  
  
“Perhaps I am, a little,” he admitted between tastes of the salt-heat of her, and he felt her shiver at the lust in his words. “You said that no one ever bothered to do this.” He pressed his lips to her naked breastbone, his hands against her ribs, and looked up at her. “That ends here. Now. For as long as you’ll have it, I will do it. And gladly.”  
  
His desire demanded that he taste the skin he had exposed, that he learn every inch of her by mapping her body with his tongue, that he take her between his lips and suck her to an insistent, aching arousal. He indulged it, his heart soaring, delighted by the heady sensations he learned anew as they swept over him. The softness of her breast against the stiffness of her nipple. Her quiet gasps when he flicked it with the tip of his tongue. The warm rose-flush of arousal that quivered through her when he hummed against her skin. The desperate appeals of her hands on his back. He sucked harder, seeking the sounds that he had craved in his dreams and lost in his nightmares, coveting every small moan in her throat until she released it, to be his. He kissed his way back down her belly, enchanted by the feeling of her skin against his lips.  
  
He drew the black lace off when he reached it, pulling it down her legs and dropping it to the floor, pressing his lips to the curls he found beneath. Her soft cries lit his blood on fire, made him incandescent with need. He parted her delicate folds with his thumb, and found the tightly furled bud of her clitoris exactly where he knew it would be. He ran the tip of his tongue slowly, deliberately, over it, around it, in lazy, delicious circles, drawing her from her practiced reticence to bloom in the wild heat of his lust. He tasted the sweet-salt brine of her, letting it sluice his senses like cold water in the desert. His hands felt their privation of her, and he reached to tip her hips into him, to drink deeply from her essence. He brushed her center with his fingers, his bewilderment that she had any firsts left on this score eclipsed by the shattering intimacy of her trust.      
  
No one had touched her so tenderly, so reverently, here. He swore he would be damned if she ever believed that it brought him anything other than ecstasy.     
  
“Chakotay, please.” He heard the quaver in her voice, a small, desperate anguish. “Please don’t make me beg you.”    
  
The quiet plea in her voice frightened him. He wondered, for a moment, if someone in the past had tried to. The thought of withholding anything from her, of making her plead with him, wrenched his gut in revulsion.  
  
“Never.”  
  
He pushed her legs over his shoulders, working one hand under the small of her back, and slid his tongue inside of her. She moaned with relief, arching gratefully in to him, and he let his tongue stroke her at his leisure. He replaced it with his fingers, firming his strokes and letting them quicken, taking her between his lips and suckling her until she cried out.  
  
Her fingers found their way into his hair, exactly where he loved to feel them.  
  
“Tell me,” he rasped, his breathing ragged. “Tell me what you like.”  
  
“Tha—” she faltered, gasping, as he redoubled his efforts. “There.” She felt her climax spark inside of her as he thrust his fingers deep, his lips insistent, his tongue driving her to an exquisite torture. “Yes, _yes_. Chakotay. There.”  
  
He nearly lost control when he felt her come beneath him, when he felt her hips curve up to meet his lips and her hands press him, exigent, against her. He tasted her release, drinking it like wine, savoring every exultant drop of her climax. He kept his lips on her until he felt her relax, felt her pounding pulse beneath him begin to slow, then kissed his way up to her mouth, covering her body with his and taking her lips gently in his own.  
  
His warm weight assured her, pressed against her, that he wasn’t going anywhere. The heat of him soaking into her as she came down was like sinking into a hot bath, and the sure strength of his arms brought her gently back to rest under him.  
  
Chakotay kissed her forehead gently. “Did you like that, beloved?”  
  
She nodded, smiling, her eyes closed, then looked up at him. “Did you?”  
  
“Did I?” he asked in astonishment. He pulled her against him, wrapping her in his arms and relishing the soft caress of her hair on his chest. “Kathryn, do you know what it means to me? To know that I can give you that? That you trust me to . . . ” he trailed off, clutching her to him harder, dropping soft kisses onto her face. “Yes, beloved, I like it very much.”  
  
Kathryn reached up to run her fingertips over his cheek, tiny flares of pleasure still running along her skin, and pulled him down to kiss him. She reveled in the soft pliance of his lips, the easy brush of his nose against hers. She twisted her hips to better cradle him lying on top of her, and felt his arousal heavy against her under the loose, dark shorts he wore. She kissed him harder.  
  
He broke them apart. “Do you—”  
  
He never got to finish the thought.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Let me.”  
  
He pulled them off, casting them across the bed, and came back to her. She kissed him in earnest, reaching for his hips to pull him into her, taking his moan of longing when he felt the slickness of her sex against his as affirmation of his need. She reached down to take him in her hand, and felt his entire body stiffen until it held him stock-still.  
  
She stopped, and looked into his face. It had twisted with concentration, and she could see him gritting his teeth. “Chakotay, what is it?”  
  
He couldn’t answer her, but finally managed to relax his shoulders and lower his head to her chest. She stroked his hair gently, listening to him measuring his breaths as he had the previous night, pressing her lips to the crown of his head. “Too fast?” she asked him slowly.  
  
He shook his head, his eyes shut tight.  
  
“Too much?”  
  
He shook his head again, his breathing tattered.  
  
“Too soon?”  
  
“No,” he said. “It . . . I had a flashback. I’m okay.”  
  
She hugged him close. “Are you sure? Do you want me to—”  
  
“No.” He shook his head sharply, reaching his hands up her back. “Please Kathryn, don’t stop.”  
  
“Here,” she said, rising and pulling him up to sit with her. “I have an idea.”  
  
He still looked a little shaken. “I’m all ears.”  
  
“Sit,” she told him gently, gesturing toward their pillows, and he did, propping them against the headboard. She took that moment to gather their clothes from the floor and put them in the hamper, as a moment for him to regroup. “And you’re much more than ears. I have proof,” she added, quirking an eyebrow at him, her voice dark. “Hours of delicious, tireless proof.”  
  
He smiled, and sat back. “Point taken.” He reached out his hand to her.  
  
She took it as she returned to bed, straddling his legs and resting on her knees, and reached forward to kiss him, pushing her right hand into his. “Show me what you like.”  
  
He received her hand in the cup of his much larger one, and raised it to his lips.  
  
She pushed herself closer to him, and she trailed her fingers over his shoulders and down his chest, pressing the warmth of her hands into his ribs then lower into his hips. She felt his arousal stiffening again. Her hands were insistent, purposeful, and her eyes never left his. “Show me.”  
  
He put her fingers around him, resting the back of her hand in the palm of his, and guided her thumb in long, gentle strokes over him. She felt his control wavering, heard the soft hitches in his breath when she followed her strong strokes through beyond his fingers to their completion. She watched him closely, his eyes shut, and let him rest his forehead against hers. She let her fingers take him harder, feeling the thickness of him in her hand, the paradox of warmth and rigid flesh. Her hands seemed to be drawing his cries of pleasure out of him, and she found that she craved the sound of each of them.  
  
"Do you like that, my love?"  
  
"Yes." He ran his hands distractedly over her thighs, up to her waist, and down again. "Yes I do."  
  
She rested her palm on the back of his neck, twisting her fingers into his hair. When she kissed him it was bruisingly deep. Fierce. Possessive.  
  
“Kathryn,” he gasped, “I won’t last if you do that.”  
  
“Maybe that’s the idea.”  
  
“No. Please.”  
  
She stopped, releasing him slowly.  
  
“You’re too far away from me,” he choked. Desire and fear and memory serrated his voice as he reached for her hips. “Kathryn, I need you. Take me. _Please_.”  
  
She beckoned him to her, taking him in her soft hands and sliding him into her, wrapping her legs around his hips. He groaned in the sweetness of her as he pulled her closer, thrusting himself in her to the hilt, unable to stop himself from trying to touch every inch of her that he could.     
  
“Kiss me Kathryn,” he begged her. “Like you did.”  
  
She did. His mind went blissfully, euphorically blank as she took his lips in hers, enthralling him in the conflagration of their joining. In Kathryn’s arms it was a black pleasure to burn, to drown, to supplicate, to have her take him as he had always wanted. In her kiss there was no past. _She loved him, she wanted him, and she would have him._ He reached between them to touch her, knowing that the sound of her voice would shatter him completely.  
  
When she cried his name aloud to the dark he came undone. He felt her tighten around him, felt her take him into her with everything she had, and he clasped her to him with her name an exultant, shouted prayer on his lips. He came in hot spurts within her, her body sheltering him from the specters of his own past, until he was panting against her and utterly spent.  
  
She rained kisses down on his face, silent tears following in their wake, his whispered name a benediction from her lips. The comfort and safety of her embrace, the gentleness of her kisses, and the light in her eyes when she looked at him mingled into a realization that fell gently over him, like silent snow. _Home. He was home._  
  
Joy overcame him, and he wept.  
  
He withdrew from her when he felt himself begin to soften, pulling her down in to the mattress with him as he enfolded her in his entire body. Their kisses were leisured, drowsy, and unhurried; their caresses playful and sated.    
  
When he finally fell asleep with her head pillowed on his shoulder, brushing his lips against her forehead, his arms a willing shelter for her cares, it was with a silent appeal to the night to stay as long as it could.


	9. The Parting Glass

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is just the first portion of Chapter 9. 
> 
> It's so fluffy, I'm gonna die.
> 
>  
> 
> Aside: Tom & Harry are unapologetic J/C shipppers.

Kathryn woke gradually, her mind clinging to the hazy warmth of sleep. Her memories of the previous night came back slowly. The comfort of lying in Chakotay’s arms. The heady, sensual dance of feeding each other. The waves of relief that followed impossibly intimate admissions. The fire that he had stoked expertly as he rubbed her feet, as though he had been doing it for years. The warmth of him under her hands. The gentle insistence of his lips on her, and the delicious release that he had so tenderly brought her to. The agitated ripples of concern when she first learned what he had meant when he said that making love to him might feel one-sided, for a while. The small, quiet triumph of seeing peace in his face, for a moment, as he had lain them down together, pulling her close to him as they had drifted into sleep.  
  
How he was clinging to her still, even as he slept, his arms wrapped around her waist and his head pillowed softly on her arm. His soft, even breathing caressed her skin. She pressed a quiet kiss to his forehead, resting her thumb against his ear.  
  
He stirred but didn’t wake, cuddling deeper into her embrace.  
  
She kissed him again, letting her fingertips trace where his dark hair and soft skin met. He stirred in earnest.  
  
“Good morning,” she whispered.  
  
“Good morning.” He tilted his head up to her in the dark.  
  
She took his lips in earnest, their sweetness and pliance enticing her to taste them over and over. Her kiss was guileless and full-hearted, asking nothing of him beyond his continuing desire to take what she offered him.  
  
Strands of her hair caressed his cheek in lazy, tousled curls. For a moment, he could think of nothing other than the quiet bliss of her touch, of coming from the repose of oblivion to wakefulness in her loving arms.     
  
“Promise me,” he whispered, pressing the warmth of his hands into her back to hug her closer. “Promise me you’ll wake me like this every morning.”  
  
“Mmm.” She hummed against his lips. “Only on the mornings where I wake up first,” she teased. “When _you_ wake up first _you‘ll_ have to kiss _me_.”  
  
He smiled. “That sounds like something I can live with.” He reached up to brush a soft, almost chaste, kiss against her lower lip. “What time is it?”  
  
“Quarter to six.”  
  
He groaned and snuggled deeper into her shoulder. “I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me _why_ you woke me an hour before the alarm?”  
  
She pressed her lips to his temple. “Honestly? I didn’t want to stop myself from kissing you. That’s all.”  
  
He heaved a contented sigh, and pulled her closer.  
  
“What is it?”  
  
“You’re not the only one who isn’t used to being wanted, Kathryn,” he breathed, and buried his lips in the soft skin below her collarbone. “If I ever tell you not to kiss me, please make sure that you _thoroughly_ check my life signs.”  
  
She laughed gently, resting her free hand against his shoulder. “I will.”  
  
He continued his languid kisses, tightening his arms around her waist. She let her fingers stroke idly through his hair in long, aimless caresses, savoring the newness of waking next to him. _Two years_ , she thought. _Two years we went without this_.  
  
“Two years,” she whispered.  
  
“I know, beloved.” He brought her unoccupied hand to his lips. “I know.”  
  
She hugged him close, letting the hypnotic strokes of his thumbs between her shoulders and in the small of her back anchor her continually in the present. She ran her fingertips from his ribs to his waist, over his hip, and back again, until her anxieties receded.   
  
He nudged her shoulder gently. “It’s about that time, isn’t it?”  
  
She nodded. “Close enough. Do you want some coffee?”  
  
“Sure, if you’re offering.”  
  
Kathryn extricated herself slowly from Chakotay’s arms, propping herself up on one elbow to look down at him. “You’re giving me _no_ incentive to get out of this bed, mister.”  
  
He laughed gently, resting his palm lightly on her hip through the sheet. “I don’t ever intend to.” He stretched, leaning back against the headboard and pillows, his hands behind his head. It left her with an unobstructed view of his torso, and hinted with little subtlety at what the blankets at his hips concealed. “Though, if we’re both late to the bridge, Tom will never let us hear the end of it.”  
  
She rose and kissed him briefly, which he contentedly returned, and crossed to the closet. His eyes followed her progress, and he rose when she pulled on the blush satin robe she had left there two nights before.  
  
“Coffee it is, then. How would you like it?”  
  
“Cream and sugar,” he said offhandedly, casting about for something to put on. He tossed a dark green robe that he had left hanging on the closet door over his shoulders, then pulled her gently toward him by the hand. “Sweet,” he said, with a whisper of a kiss against the apple of her cheek. “Like you.”  
  
Kathryn felt herself blush, and smiled. “ _That_ , mister, _is_ a come-on.”  
  
“Am I forbidden?”  
  
“No!” She laughed. “At least not here.” She swatted him playfully on the ass through his thick robe, then drew him to her by the hip.  
  
“Good,” he murmured, and kissed the tip of her nose.  
  
“Keep this up, and we _will_ be late,” she teased.  
  
He laced his fingers tenderly into her hair, all the levity in his voice suddenly gone. “One more,” he whispered, and kissed her as she nodded. “I’ll be right behind you,” he said, releasing her and busying himself with the robe’s fastenings.  
  
Kathryn smiled to herself, and turned toward the replicator.  
  
*    *    *    *    *  
  
Chakotay gave himself a slowly-measured count of ten before following her into the living area. She turned from the replicator as he did, and handed him a steaming mug. He sat down at the table and took a sip. The coffee was smooth and sweet, and he could taste the faintest trace of cinnamon.  
  
“Coffee. Black. Hot.”  
  
The replicator hummed, and Kathryn stood with the newly-materialized mug in her hands. He watched her quietly as she brought it to her lips, savoring a long draught of it, her eyes shut, before she heaved a sigh of contentment.  
  
She caught him starting, and raised her eyebrows. “Yes?”  
  
He shook his head affectionately. “Watching you enjoy things.” He indicated his own mug. “This is great.”  
  
“Well, you did say sweet.” She smiled. “I thought you’d like it.”  
  
He nodded. “I do. I wish I’d thought of it myself.” He took another long swallow. “You might make a coffee drinker out of me at this rate, if you keep plying me with this stuff.”  
  
She laughed, setting her own mug on the table and resting her hands on his shoulders. “I don’t intend to _make_ anything of you, dear.” She kissed the crown of his head, and reached her arms around him. He leaned back into her, linking his fingers over her forearm and running his thumb over her wrist. “You’re already a fine First Officer, and my best friend.” She kissed his jaw and whispered, “Not to mention the best damn lover I’ve ever had. I don’t think there’s anything to improve.”  
  
He pulled her into his lap. “Kathryn, you are giving me no incentive to be on time for Alpha shift this morning.”  
  
“Touché.” She kissed this tip of his nose, then returned to the replicator and ordered a uniform. “Speaking of which, we’re due in thirty minutes.”  
  
He drained the rest of his coffee, then went to retrieve his own uniform.   
  
“Where did you decide to hold the wake tonight?” she called after him.  
  
“Holodeck Two,” he answered as he pulled on loose shorts and a turtleneck from the drawer. “B’Elanna said that Tom has a prototype program that he’s working on. It’s just a single room right now, but it’s comfortable and fits all of us. I told her we’d take it.”  
  
Kathryn came in, setting her coffee on the dresser and affixing her comm badge to her jacket, then handing him his own with his pips from the coffee table. He took them.  
  
“I wish you could be there, even though you _are_ taking my shift on the bridge.”  
  
She was carefully inserting her own pips individually into her collar. “I wish I felt like it was my place to go.”  
  
“ _I’d_ like you to be there.”  
  
“I know you would.” She looked up at him. “May I ask why?”  
  
He looked away, taking her last pip from where she had lain it on the dresser. She turned her head to let him place it in her collar. “Purely selfish reasons.”  
  
“Such as?” she prompted gently.  
  
A beat. He smoothed her collar. “Knowing you’ll catch me if I fall.”  
  
Kathryn looked at him under a furrowed brow. “How do you mean?”  
  
He sighed, resigned. “I have enough trouble getting up in front of people to perform for talent night.” He took a sip of her coffee, and grimaced. “Or, more accurately, I’ve put more effort into making sure my name never gets onto the list than I would have needed to put into actually finding something to do.” He handed the mug back to her.  
  
She took it. “Are you seriously telling me that my First Officer, who is the first to volunteer for dangerous away missions and for every first contact we’ve made in almost four years, has performance anxiety?”  
  
He could hear her bewilderment. “Unfortunately, I am.”  
  
“I believe you, but Chakotay I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t surprised. I had no idea.” She knitted her eyebrows together. “It’s never interfered with your duties.”  
  
“That’s true. For some reason, it’s easier to circumvent when I know that I have a job to do.”  
  
Something echoed in her memory, an offhand, calculated deflection:  
  
 _“If Neelix has another talent night, then I hope you’ll reprise it.”  
  
“Oh no. Not until certain other people take their turn. The ship's First Officer for instance.” _  
  
_“Me? Get up in front of people and perform? I don't think so.”_  
  
She hadn’t completely registered it in the moment, but she remembered how his voice had changed. A subtle, guarded deflection, as though sizing up the conversation for danger.  
  
 _“Come on, Chakotay, there must be some talent you have that people would enjoy. Maybe I could stand with an apple on my head and you could phaser it off.”_  
  
 _“Sounds great,”_ he had said with a mischievous laugh and a wry quirk of his eyebrow, seeing that she wouldn’t press him. _“If I miss I get to be Captain.”_  
  
“I hadn’t thought of that. I suppose that Talent Night isn’t exactly in the job description.”  
  
“No, it isn’t,” he whispered. “Though, strictly speaking, I suppose a wake is. It’s just . . . very close.”  
  
She found his hand and brought it to her lips. “Let me see what I can do.”  
  
He squeezed her hand in response. “Thank you.”  
  
*    *    *    *    *  
  
They managed to avoid being late for the Alpha shift.  
  
Tuvok watched as the Captain and Commander entered the bridge from the turbolift. The first thing he noticed was that Chakotay carried a coffee mug identical to Kathryn’s. It was her custom, but not his, to bring coffee to the bridge. He watched them surreptitiously for overt signs of their furthered relationship, but none were apparent.  
  
“Good morning Captain, Commander.”  
  
“Good morning Tuvok.”  
  
“Ensign.” Chakotay inclined his head toward the young woman in Harry’s usual chair.  
  
They took their seats. Tom swiveled around slowly in the helmsman’s chair, his face deep in his own coffee mug. “Morning all.”  
  
“Lieutenant.”  
  
Tom raised his eyebrows. “Coffee on the bridge, Chakotay? That might be a first.”  
  
He took a sip. “I’m sure it isn’t.” He shared a sidelong, conspiratorial glance with the Captain. “Though, if the new blend I tried this morning is any indication, it might become a regular thing.”  
  
“New blend?”  
  
“Yeah.” He took another sip.”I thought that instead of hating it, I might consult a master.” He raised the mug a few inches toward the Captain in a small toast.  
  
“A logical course of action, Commander,” said Tuvok from the tactical console. “There is no one aboard with a greater enthusiasm for coffee than the Captain.”  
  
He watched the captain’s eyes flicking from Lieutenant Paris, to the commander, to himself, as thought she were watching a game unfold, a small smile on her face.  
  
“A reputation I intend to uphold.” She sipped her own coffee. “Has the Gamma shift officially been relieved?”  
  
“Yes, Captain.”  
  
“Good. Chakotay, you have the bridge. I’ll be in my Ready Room.” She rose, and Tom turned back toward the helm.  
  
Only Tuvok saw her lean close to the Commander before she left, saw her take his hand briefly and squeeze it. He returned it, smiling.  
  
She passed his station on her way. “Tuvok, may I?” She indicated for him to follow her.  
  
“Yes Captain.” He followed.  
  
*    *    *    *    *  
  
Chakotay watched them leave, sure that Tuvok had missed neither Kathryn’s gesture nor his response, however subtle they both had been. He took a long, slow breath, careful to keep Tom from hearing it. _There’s a conversation we need to have_ , he thought. _How do we tell everyone? Do we want to tell everyone?_ He didn’t know how to answer.  
  
“Tom, thanks for offering your new program to us tonight,” he said to the helmsman’s back, looking for anything that would get his mind off of what was actually going to happen in that room that evening.  
  
“No problem. Happy to be of service,” said the younger man, and Chakotay knew he meant it.  
  
“Tell me about it. What are you planning for the whole program?”  
  
“I’m thinking of making it an Irish pub,” he said proudly. “Something a little more versatile than Sandrine’s. Rings, darts, good beer, plenty of tables. A place where the crew can hang out, even if they aren’t looking for a date.”  
  
“Sounds good.”  
  
“I’m planning on it being more than just a. pub, too. A whole village, set on nineteenth century Earth,” he said, turning in his chair. “Let everyone get away from starships and technology, and life for little while. Seaside walking, great scenery, ruins of castles, and no contraptions more complicated than a gas lamp.”  
  
“You should consult the Captain.” His brow furrowed. “Should I?”  
  
“Oh yes. She has a remarkable knowledge of Irish history, and of Earth’s nineteenth century. I’d say it’s on par with your enthusiasm for the twentieth.”    
  
Tom nodded, mildly surprised. “I may do that.”  
  
“What are you planning to call it?”  
  
“Right now, my working title is Kilkenny, but it doesn’t quite have the right sound I want yet.”  
  
Chakotay nodded. “I’ll be interested to see it when you’re finished.”  
  
*    *    *    *    *  
  
Tuvok followed the Captain into her Ready Room. “Yes, Captain?”  
  
“Have a seat, Tuvok.”  
  
He did, and she sat across from him on the sofa. “I told you that I would inform you if _negotiations_ between Commander Chakotay and I ever opened.” She took a measured breath. “I’m here to inform you that they have.”  
  
Tuvok nodded. “May I be the first to congratulate you?”  
  
Kathryn smiled. “Privately, yes.” She shifted to lean toward him, resting her elbows on her knees. “I have to tell you, Tuvok, that we’re taking this very slowly.”  
  
“Not out of fear, I hope?”  
  
“No.” She remembered the long, drawn-out confessions of the previous night. The time for fears like those was long past. “We both know what’s at stake, if we succeed or fail at this.” She sipped her coffee. “I’m leaving it up to Chakotay to decide when we tell the crew.”  
  
“Because he is your subordinate?”  
  
“Yes, and because he’s a very private man.”  
  
“I know that well.”  
  
“He hasn’t been allowed to have that privacy in the past. I think that it’s something he deserves.”  
  
Tuvok nodded. “I will, of course, respect his wishes and yours Captain. But I am glad to know that you aren’t wasting any _more_ time.” He rose to return to the bridge. “And I would ask either of you not to hesitate to invoke me as a third party if ever you find yourself in a conflict of interest.”  
  
She gave him a wry smile. “Thank you, my old friend. I promise that we will.”  
  
*    *    *    *    *

That afternoon, Chakotay paced his office. Every time he looked at the chronometer it seemed to have slowed down. _Surely he’d been pacing for more than ten minutes? Surely._ He was sure he’d wear through the floor if he kept at it, and yet sitting at his desk for more than a few seconds was intolerable; work, indeed anything that required concentration, was impossible. 

He sank onto the low sofa, bracing his elbows on his knees and his head in his palms, willing his body to calm down and his mind to stop racing. _It’s a wake_ he told himself, over and over. _It’s a wake. Not a funeral. Not talent night. Nothing like that. We need this moment to be together. To console each other. To make sure nobody . . . falls through the cracks_ he finished in his mind’s voice. Chakotay reached for Sveda’s letter, which he had left on the end table next to a turned wooden bowl. _New Earth_. The memory of turning it came suddenly to the front of his thoughts.  
  
*    *    *    *    *  
  
It was the first time it had really rained since _Voyager_ had left two weeks before, and the sudden change from a gentle drizzle-fog to a cold, steady downpour had driven them inside. He had been close to the shelter and managed to make it with only a few splotchy drops on his shirt that turned it a darker shade of rusty red-brown, but Kathryn had been checking insect traps near the tree line. By the time she made it to the shelter, she was soaked through.  
  
“I’ll get you a towel,” he said, starting toward the bathroom. When he had one in hand he thought better of it, and grabbed two.  
  
Kathryn was wringing her hair out in the entryway when he returned.  
  
“Here.”  
  
“Thanks.” She gratefully took the smaller towel and tousled her long tresses in it before twisting it around them, over her head. “I suppose I should be happy it’s raining. Afterward, I should have my pick of insects to trap.”

He smiled affectionately. _Ever the scientist_. Even in her quest to find a cure, he could tell that the prospect of having new specimens to study thrilled her. “You will. Maybe rain is just what you need for a breakthrough.”

She nodded, her gaze drifting away from the towel he handed her. “I hope so.” She turned away from him and made for the bathroom. “I’m going to go wring out these clothes.”

He had nearly offered to help her when his sense caught up with him, realizing what such an offer implied. Wide-eyed, he clamped his lips shut between his teeth, covering them with his fingers. _Where had that come from? How had he almost been so reckless?_ He shook his head vigorously to clear it and reached for the wood on his desk that he had begun turning into a bowl a few nights before. He leaned against the door frame, watching the rain outside, patiently turning the gouge against the bowl’s inside curve. 

His own near-admission had rattled him. He thought that he had understood the nature of their situation, had disciplined his own emotions with the knowledge that it would take much longer than a few weeks for her to let go of the cultivated captain’s distance and emotional opaqueness that she had maintained on _Voyager_. That, even when she did let it go, it would take even longer for her to break the habits that so many years of practice had created. She was decisive—he knew it—and was more than willing to break regulations when the need arose, but so often she had more trouble seeing the need when it came to her personal life.  
  
 _I’m not going to rush her,_ he had said to himself, over and over. _I’m going to take it slowly. I’m going to do this right._

Small shavings of wood curled away from the blade of the gouge and fell, like tiny feathers, to the floor. The steady _scrape, scrape_ of it against the wood and the occupation for his hands settled his mind back into its patient vigil. Looking out at the rain, he thought of the bathtub hiding near the clearing in the woods, the one he had claimed after Kathryn had finished setting her insect traps. It was far from finished, and he would have a job cleaning it out after, but this would be a wonderful first test of how well it held water. He smiled to himself, seeing the similarity between the small bowl in his hands and the tub in the forest.  
  
 _A gift_ , he thought. _An affirmation of my devotion, if she doesn’t already know it. That’s all._  
  
He knew what he _hoped_ would happen: that he would see her smile. That she would understand his devotion and everything that came with it. That her having it would make this place, would make _him_ , feel as close to being home as he could. That she would know that he knew how important feeling at home was to her, and that he wanted to give her that at whatever cost to himself.  
  
Chakotay shifted his back against the door frame, breathing in the saturated air as the rain continued to lash the roof. In hindsight, it was no accident that the tub would be comfortably large enough for two. He allowed his mind a momentary lapse into the warmth of his fantasy. The heat of the water, just how he knew she liked it from the steam that gushed out of the bathroom on the one occasion that she had allowed herself a water shower. The brace of her back against the wood grain of the tub that he had smoothed with his own hands, that he had assured would never splinter. The nest of auburn curls pulled messily off of her neck, away from the surface of the water, that she would let him take down and wash for her when he asked. The comfort of bracing his own back where she had braced hers, climbing in behind her and letting her rest her shoulders against the expanse of his chest, matching the curve of her body with his own, letting her playfully entwine their legs. How he would hold her flush against him, his arms around her torso and hips, his thumbs soothing the places where her bones came closer to the surface. How she would lie back against him, utterly at peace, tucking her head against the side of his neck, perhaps reaching up to brush her fingertips along the edge of his jaw. 

He shifted again, deliberately digging part of the door frame into the muscles below his shoulder blades, testing the inside of the bowl that he had just carved with the pad of his thumb. He could still feel small ridges where the wood needed to be smoothed further. _It’s coming along_ , he thought, firmly corralling his thoughts and pushing them to the back of his mind, continuing to guide the gouge around the edge.  
  
*    *    *    *    *

Chakotay ran his finger gently over the now-smooth inner curve of the bowl, the memory slipping back into the past, and picked up Sveda’s letter. The words filtered through his vision again, though he wasn’t really reading them, and he set it down again with a sigh. 

_I don’t know what they need._   
  
_I know what I need. I need her to hold me while I cry, and then let me hold her while she falls asleep. I need her to let me make love to her until I can’t remember my own name, because it’s the only way I can set this down, even for a minute. Because it’s the only thing that will make me believe that I’m capable of more than being angry._   
  
_But I don’t know what they need._

That thought, more than any other, set him to pacing again.  
  
 _Can’t you be angry about this anymore?_ The small voice in the pit of his stomach taunted him. _Have you gone soft in your Starfleet career?_

The voice, to his horror, sounded like Seska, and it felt as though it had punched him in the gut. He halted in his tracks, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyelids. _Stop_ , he told the voice. _Stop_. _You’re not helping anyone._

 _Neither are you._  

He gritted his teeth. _It’s not true. It’s not true, and you know it._ He took a deep breath. _They don’t need someone angry. They need . . ._ he swallowed and leaned one hand against his desk, pressing the thumb and forefinger of the other into the bridge of his nose, marshaling all of his willpower to focus. _They need someone to give them permission to grieve. Together. And to show them how. For better or worse, that person has to be me._  

The door chimed at his back. “Come in.”

He heard it open and turned to see Kathryn. She waited until it closed before she spoke.  
  
“Are you all right?” Her voice was soft, but her eyes were hard. Searching for what he needed, as though she knew he couldn’t bring himself to ask.

He regarded her for a moment, then closed his eyes and shook his head, only managing to mouth, _No_. He gestured to her, a small pleading request, and by the time he had opened his eyes again she was against him, her arms open and around him, hugging him as close to her as she could. He pressed her to his chest, clinging to her gratefully, brushing soft kisses against where her skin met her hair and into the crown of her head.

“No,” he managed in a whisper. “No. I’m not okay.”

“I had a feeling you wouldn’t be,” she murmured into his shoulder, pressing the heat of her hands into his back and rubbing long strokes between his shoulder blades. “Lean on me, love. I’ve got you.”  
  
He pulled her closer, shaking his head. “I don’t want to knock you over.”

She laughed and gave him a lopsided smile. “It’ll take more than that, trust me. Come here.” She took his hand and a tugged gently, pulling him toward the sofa. He let her, pulling her against him in turn and into his lap as he sat down, wrapping his arms around her waist.

“You’ve been so brave,” she told him as she stroked his hair, and he felt her voice against his forehead as he snuggled into her neck.

“Kathryn,” he breathed into her shoulder, fighting with everything he had to not come apart in her arms. His voice broke. “I’m so afraid.”

“I know. I know you are," she soothed him. "You’ve been so brave, my love, and you’ve carried so much.” She pressed her palm against the back of his head and hugged him. “Chakotay, I’m so proud of you.”

His heart leapt, in spite of his grief, and he smiled to himself through his tears. Her arms around his shoulders dulled the knife-edge of his fear, and her lips against his temple routed the panic that he had been holding at bay since he left the bridge that morning. He swallowed, intent on keeping his voice steady, and drew her fingers to his lips, kissing them. “I love hearing you say that.”

“Good,” she answered, kissing his forehead and massaging the hand that held hers with her thumb. “Because I love telling you.” She reached up to brush her fingers against his jaw, and he looked up at her. The bright blue gaze that he so loved, that he sought more than anything else in his waking hours, regarded him, unflinching. Slowly, deliberately, she brushed the tracks of his tears from his cheeks with the back of her thumb. “It’s about that time.” She indicated the chronometer. 

He followed her indication. “Give me two minutes?”

She nodded against him, tightening her arm around his shoulders. “Take as long as you need.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes, Chakotay listening to the thrum of the engines and the rasp of Kathryn’s thumb against the wool fibers of his uniform jacket. He heard her words, over and over. _Chakotay, I’m so proud of you._ The fear in his heart stilled.

He squeezed her hand gently and raised it to his lips. “Okay,” he said with a deep breath. “I’m ready.”

“Let me kiss you before we go?”

He nodded and she did, pressing her parted lips to his and curling her fingers gently behind his neck to bring him closer. He gripped her tighter when he felt her brush the tip of her tongue against his lower lip, and pulled her down to him to taste her. 

She let him, allowing herself one moment of joy in the skillful, purposeful movements of his mouth. Then gently she broke the intensity, the heat of her breath feathering against his skin as she pulled away to kiss his cheeks.

He gave her a small smile. “I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.”

“Then let’s go.”

They met no one on their way to the turbolift, and Chakotay’s heart soared when Kathryn didn’t release his hand as they arrived. In the corridor outside his quarters, she stood on tip-toe to kiss him briefly.

“Go and get changed.” She smiled. “I’ll be right behind you.”

He smiled playfully in return. “Aye, captain.”  
  


*    *    *    *    *

The lull between shifts had arrived, and Harry found himself and Tom manning the bridge alone, picking up their circulating argument from breakfast. 

“I’m telling you Tom, there’s something going on between those two. It’s serious, and it’s been going on for a while.”

“How do you figure that, Harry?”

Harry was quiet for a moment. “It’s how he looks at her. When he thinks no one’s looking,” he said finally. Tom turned from the helm to face him. “In staff meetings, when he thinks everyone else is looking at her too? It’s obvious.”

“I hate to burst your bubble Harry, but most of the ship knows that Chakotay’s been a goner for years. It’s the captain who takes ‘inscrutable’ to professional levels.”

Harry sighed. “She’s not a _sadist_ , Tom. If she wasn’t interested then she’d say something.”

“Would she?”

“That’s cruel. And she isn’t.”

“No,” he said, turning back to the helm. “I suppose you’re right.”

 “So,” Harry continued, “She’s not leading him on, and he’s definitely still interested. Logically, what else can it be?”

“Maybe she did turn him down, and he doesn’t want to take ‘No’ for an answer.”

Harry shook his head. “No. That doesn’t sound like the Commander.”

Tom looked thoughtful. “You’re right. It doesn’t,” he mused, revolving slowly in a circle. He halted and gave Harry a serious look. “Do you want in on the betting pool Harry?”

“I thought you got rid of that after we severed Seven from the collective.”

“If by ‘got rid of’ you mean, ‘took temporarily offline,’ then yes.” He patted the console behind him. “One flip of a switch, and we’re up and running again.”

Harry pursed his lips. “All right. I’m in.”

Tom rubbed his hands together. “Great. What’s your bet?”

Harry thought for a moment. “He said something first.”

Tom knitted his eyebrows together. “You’re betting _against_ the captain’s tried-and-true method of shooting from the hip?”

Harry shook his head. “No. I’m betting on her adherence to protocol. She’s a superior officer. He’d have to do a lot to convince her that she wasn’t taking advantage, however she felt.”

Tom nodded. “Okay.” He pulled a padd from the inside pocket of his jacket. “Harry declares for Team Chakotay.” He entered data, then looked up. “Who’s going to crack first, and give it away?”

“The Commander.”

Tom entered more data. “You’re in good company there. And . . . the last thing . . . when?”

“When what?”

“How long before he cracks?”

Harry weighed his options. “I give it two weeks . . . from when we got the messages through the array.”

Tom entered the last of the data and stowed the padd back in his pocket. “Off the record Harry, you said you think this thing between them’s been going on for a while. When do you think it started?”  
  
“I’m not 100% sure. I only really noticed after we rescued them from that planet, after Dr. Pel smuggled us medicine from that Vidiian convoy. But I couldn’t be sure.” He frowned, pensive. “Why do you ask?”

“Well, apart from professional busybody curiosity,” he said wryly, and Harry raised his eyebrows, “My money’s always been on the captain. She said something first, and she’ll give it away.”

“And when is this astounding breach of protocol supposed to happen?”

Tom smiled. “I don’t think it has. Yet.”  
  
Harry frowned. "How's this going to work, exactly? With teams?"  
  
"Easy," Tom answered. "First two are team answers. Losing team buys the winning team's drinks, collectively. Team Chakotay's going to have their hands full if Team Janeway comes out on top." He smirked. "Though, the 'Who cracks first' betting's mostly even money. And then—." He paused for dramatic effect. "The winner—that is, the person who guesses closest for _when_ —gets a drink from everyone."  
  
"And how many is that, exactly?"  
  
Tom checked the padd in his pocket. "Including you? Sixty-five."  
  
Harry's eyes went wide, but he was saved from reacting by the chirp of his comm badge. “Torres to Kim.”

“Go ahead.”

“I just saw the pool.” He could hear B’Elanna’s smile through the comm. “Welcome to Team Chakotay.”


End file.
